Easter

Mary Magdalene believed that she had lost everything when Jesus died. John’s Gospel tells us that, when Jesus died on Calvary, Mary Magdalene stood at the foot of the cross with Mary, the mother of Jesus and John, the beloved disciple, as the dying Jesus entrusted His mother and John to each other. She witnessed at first hand the brutal death on the cross of one that she loved so much. We don’t know why it was that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb alone on Easter Sunday morning. Was it that she and the other women had agreed to meet there? Did she, perhaps, want to spare Jesus’ mother the agony of seeing her son’s body before it was completely prepared for burial? On the day of His death, those preparations had been interrupted by the onset of the sabbath. Mary’s journey was solitary also risky. Guards protected the tomb lest any of Jesus’ disciples tried to remove His body. They were rough men; and she was a solitary woman. In those days, as now, in so many places, a woman had little status. Mary Magdalene was the first witness of the resurrection. Yet her unexpected news, so beyond the imagining of any of the apostles, had less credibility in the society of her day precisely because it was reported by a woman. Peter and John wanted to verify her story for themselves. It was only when they entered the tomb of Jesus that they realized the truth of the resurrection.

The setting of today’s Gospel is the Last Supper, Earlier, Jesus had predicted that He would be betrayed; Judas had gone out, ultimately to betray Him, and “night had fallen.” Now the “hour has come,” and Jesus prays what is often known as His “priestly prayer.” He prays that the Father may glorify Him and that He may glorify the Father. The “hour of glorification” is that of His crucufixion, death and resurrection, by which He brings about the salvation of the world. Jesus, the only begotten Son of the Father, having by His own life on earth revealed the meaning of eternal life and the love of the Father, prays that the Father will glorify Him in His disciples, that is, the Church; it is a prayer that foretells the gift of the Spirit.

Jesus’ prediction that one of His disciples would betray Him is the subject of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece The Last Supper. The artist captures the vibrancy of the disciples’ emotions and reactions so wonderfully that he seems to present in reality the drama of the scene, though it is the product of his imagination. The upper room appears as an extension of the Dominican refectory in Milan where the painting is located. Originally, the tapestries in the picture would have reproduced 15th century Italian embroidery, painted in exquisite deatil. Another master painter, Veronese, transforms the Last Suppe into a sumptous Venetian banquet where, gathered with Jesus and the disciples, are a jester with a parrot, dwarfs and dogs. In both of these paintings, though, we do not see the Last Supper as it really was – each artist in different ways brings the past into his own time. Sometimes people are said to “live in the past,” which can mean that they have not adjusted to present-day life or cannot free themselves from unhappy memories. Just remembering the past is different, for remembering it helps us to live in and for the present. The people of Israel remembered the dark times when they had been beyond the help of any human power, yet help had come from God. In particular, they remembered the Exodus, their passage from slavery to freedom, and they brought their remembrance into the present with the Passover. At the Last Supper Christ instituted the Eucharist, a new Passover but more than just a remembrance. No artist could portray the reality of the bread and wine transformed into the body and blood of Christ; but we experience that reality today.

In today’s Gospel the song of trouble and heartbreak is about to erupt in the life of Jesus. Here, in His final conversation with His disciples, Jesus seeks to strengthen his friends in the face of the coming darkness. Very soon His own heart will be greatly troubled, as He prays in the garden of Gethsemane, knowing that His enemies are closing in. Nobody escapes trouble and heartbreak. Nobody escapes from fear. And yet there is a way out of these dark places. That heavenly place is the presence of God, and Jesus now tells us how to find our way. As His disciples are thrown into confusion, they begin to ask Him questions. Two very important questions emerge: “Lord, where are You going?” and “How can we find the way there?” He is going to God, His Father, and in following Jesus we will find our way there too.

Trouble and heartache come to everyone in this world, and in many different guises. There are issues of injustice, where people do not receive their share of bread in this world; issues of violence, where people’s lives are torn apart by bloodshed, issues of human relationship; issues of bereavement, where people suddenly lose the ones they love. The word of Jesus, spoken first to His disciples at the Last Supper, are repeated to us today: “Do not let your heart be troubled.” The Lord himself is the reason why we are not to lose hope. Today we hear what St. Peter has to say about the importance of others, about the importance of the Church. The Lord is a living stone, and we can set ourselves close to Him. It is only by being set next to one another in the Lord that we can be strong. It is this precious love in our lives that will enable us to have a care for one another, and as a Church to have a care for everyone. To rescue the human heart from trouble is the great work that we can do.

They…recognized Him at the breaking of bread. Twe depressed, half-believeing disciples on the road to Emmaus recognized the risen Lord in a setting with which you and I are instantly familiar. We are tempted to say, “There is something magic about the Mass,” but that is not right: magic has no place in Christianity. When we first met them in today’s Gospel, these two travellers on the road to Emmaus could not believe in the resurrection of Jesus. They had been His followers, and that made it worse. Jesus had to spend the whole day walking with them, explaining the psalms and prophecies of the Old Testament, to prepare them for the blinding moment of recognition.

As soon as they recognized the risen Lord, They set out that instant and returned to Jerusalem. Their joy was so great that it couldn’t wait till morning. They ran the seven miles back to the city to bring the stunning news. Jesus is alive. Their depression was lifted, their despair had disappeared. If Christ is risen, all things can be hoped for. As men and women of trust, we are oddballs in our secular world, which is grim, sarcastic, sad, expecting the worst, pooh-poohing virtue and unselfishness. We are the opposite. We can bring each day with hope in our heart, because we know that the risen Christ is with us, helping us interpret everything that may happen, casting His light on every encounter, every problem.

Every Sunday at Mass we proclaim the Creed – the “I believe”. The word “creed” comes from the Latin word “credo”, meaning “I believe”; and the word “believe” derives ultimately from a word related to “love”. When we pray the Creed, when we say we believe, we are making a statement about the person in whom we trust, the one to whom we have given our hearts – just as Thomas did. “The truth is out there.” For the Christians, the truth of the resurrection will never be proved or disproved by scientific reasoning of historical data, but by the effects of that truth in our world and in our personal lives. The first reading gives an indication of some of those effects: a faithfulness to the teaching of the apostles, to the community, to the breaking of bread, to prayer. Perhaps most importantly, the real hallmarks of the risen Jesus are the peace and joy, the healing and reconciliation that this Spirit brings into people’s lives – driving out fear and sadness, overcoming the death-dealing power of sin. This is the real sign of the resurrestion, the truth that we are called to live out and embody, for the healing and salvation of the world.