Apr 14, 2014
Acts 10:34, 37-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23
Colossians 3:1-4
John 20:1-9
Jesus is nowhere visible. Yet today's Gospel tells us that Peter
and John "saw and believed."
What did they see? Burial shrouds lying on the floor of an empty
tomb. Maybe that convinced them that He hadn't been carted off by
grave robbers, who usually stole the expensive burial linens and
left the corpses behind.
But notice the repetition of the word "tomb" - seven times in nine
verses. They saw the empty tomb and they believed what He had
promised: that God would raise Him on the third day.
Chosen to be His "witnesses," today's First Reading tells us, the
Apostles were "commissioned...to preach...and testify" to all that
they had seen - from His anointing with the Holy Spirit at the
Jordan to the empty tomb.
More than their own experience, they were instructed in the
mysteries of the divine economy, God's saving plan - to know how
"all the prophets bear witness" to Him (see Luke
24:27,44).
Now they could "understand the Scripture," could teach us what He
had told them - that He was "the Stone which the builders
rejected," which today's Psalm prophesies His Resurrection and
exaltation (see Luke
20:17; Matthew
21:42; Acts
4:11).
We are the children of the apostolic witnesses. That is why we
still gather early in the morning on the first day of every week to
celebrate this feast of the empty tomb, give thanks for "Christ our
life," as today's Epistle calls Him.
Baptized into His death and Resurrection, we live the heavenly life
of the risen Christ, our lives "hidden with Christ in God." We are
now His witnesses, too. But we testify to things we cannot see but
only believe; we seek in earthly things what is above.
We live in memory of the Apostles' witness, like them eating and
drinking with the risen Lord at the altar. And we wait in hope for
what the Apostles told us would come - the day when we too "will
appear with Him in glory."