'Hear the Word!' by Deacon Charles Paolino: Easter Sunday

A reading from the Acts of the Apostles

(Chapter 10:34a, 37-43)

When we read about Peter’s bold proclamation that Jesus was “appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead,” we may recall that this was the same Peter who had denied knowing Jesus and had gone into hiding while his friend and teacher was being tormented and killed. But the contrast in Peter’s behavior is not a reason to criticize him. Rather, it reassures us that if we, like Peter, at times have our doubts about Jesus or at times forget what he has taught us, we can return to him knowing that he will forgive and embrace us. After all, the gospels do not report that the risen Jesus ever alluded to the flight of Peter and the other frightened disciples. On the contrary, he entrusted them with his Church, a trust we have inherited as his disciples.  

Responsorial Psalm

(Psalm 118)

Our response to the psalm as we celebrate the Resurrection is certainly fitting: “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad!” But we enjoy the fruits of the Resurrection every day of our lives, because we know every day that Jesus Christ has won for us the promise of eternal life. Why not celebrate that every day in prayers of gratitude and praise for God and in acts of generosity, compassion, and justice?

A reading from St. Paul's Letter to the Colossians

(Chapter 3:1-4)

“Think of what is above,” Paul wrote to the Christian community in Colossae, “not of what is on earth.” We can’t imagine how the Colossians in the first century applied that to themselves. For us, however, the advice has clear implications. We live in an era of unrelenting pressure to accumulate goods, to have at least as many luxuries and gadgets as our neighbors have. The risk, as marketers tell us that we are what we own, is that material possessions will become gods that take the place in our lives that properly belongs only to the one God. 

A reading from the holy Gospel according to John

(Chapter 20:1-9)

In the Gospel according to John, there is only one occasion on which Jesus predicts that he will die but then return to life. That prediction was the metaphorical statement, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (2:19) And John adds in that passage that the disciples did not understand until after Jesus had died and risen that he had been referring not to the Temple but to his body. Still, the synoptic gospels report several instances in which Jesus more directly predicted, to these same disciples, his death and resurrection. The author of Matthew’s Gospel, for example, has Jesus saying, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised to life.” (17:22b-23a) And Matthew adds, “And the disciples were filled with grief.” (17-22b) How can it be, then, that the empty tomb wasn’t exactly what they expected? How can it be, as John writes, that the two apostles, peering into the burial place, “did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.” (20:9)

Perhaps we can understand this better if we recall that the disciples had been experiencing things that had never occurred before—things they would have assumed could not occur”: water turned into wine; sick and disabled people healed with a touch or even with only a word; dead people restored to life. If you’ve ever been entertained by a skilled magician, you may have gone away convinced that, even though you had seen ball of paper converted into a raw egg while no one touched it, such a thing was not possible, so there had to be an explanation besides magic. Now Peter and John were looking, not at the risen Jesus but rather at an empty tomb. Mary Magdalene had already implied what the explanation might be: “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.” Given the antagonism toward Jesus in official circles, how much easier it would be for the apostles to accept that plausible explanation rather than the preposterous notion of resurrection.   

In the end, though, they did opt for the preposterous notion and for the only thing that could inspire them to do it: They met the risen Jesus. They saw him, listened to him, and ate with him. They knew he had been dead. Now, they knew he was alive. They did what was possible only for people who knew for a fact that a dead man was alive: they spread the news far and wide, Peter literally shouting it from the rooftops. We believe because they believed. They believed because they knew.

This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad! 

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Image: Jesus Christ, part of the Resurrection group by Germain Pilon (before 1572) Louvre Museum, Paris.  Public domain. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Excerpts from the English translation of the Lectionary for Mass © 1969, 1981, 1997, International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation (ICEL). All rights reserved. Passages quoted in the reflections are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Charles Paolino is managing editor at RENEW International. He is a permanent deacon of the Diocese of Metuchen.