Sunday, April 20, 2025
EASTER OF THE LORD – YEAR C
Sunday Gospel Commentary
Lk 24,1-12
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
Give thanks to the Lord because He is good,
for His love is forever.
Let Israel say, “His love is forever.”
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!
The right hand of the Lord has risen,
the right hand of the Lord has wrought feats.
I will not die, but I will remain alive
And I will proclaim the works of the Lord.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!
The stone discarded by the builders
Has become the cornerstone.
This was made by the Lord:
A marvel in our eyes.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!
Laudato si’, o mio Signore! Hallelujah! With our hearts overflowing with Easter joy, today we contemplate the central event of our faith: Christ’s resurrection! We are in the culmination of the story of salvation, with the liturgy of the Easter triduum. We invite you to slow down, to set aside time to deepen and pray over these verses of the Word. The reading of the passages from Luke on these solemn days focused on the location of the events, immersed in creation. An olive grove, a mountain and a garden. Today we find ourselves in the garden, foreshadowed already in the dialogue between Jesus and the evildoer on the mount of Golgotha. And here we are joined by a question: Why do you seek among the dead the one who is alive? Jesus is not to be sought among the dead, for He is the Living One! We can encounter him every day, in our daily lives, if only we learn to live in his logic, stripping ourselves of the human prejudices that give us a distorted view of God’s face.
What is resurrection? It might be worth asking ourselves that question from time to time. Today is a special day, for all of us, and it may be fitting to devote some of our attention to this concept of faith that we often risk taking for granted. We are Christians, and we believe in the risen Lord Jesus. If Jesus had not risen, what would we believe? So it is clear that, for our faith, this is the central event of the whole story. But one would have to ask: Do we really believe it, or are we like the Sadducees who denied the resurrection? To the Sadducees, Jesus replied, “He is not a God of the dead but of the living! You are greatly mistaken.” The great error that arises “from the moment that you do not know the Scriptures, nor the power of God.” This is the great promise of God since the Old Testament, and reiterated by Jesus. And instead, it often seems as if we only believe what we see, in light of our fears. We are afraid of death, and so we think that “as long as there is life there is hope.” The resurrection is much more than that.
It is not about reanimating a corpse; after all, that happens to Lazarus, who some time later, months or years later, died again. Neither is it about reincarnation, as if the body becomes a kind of prison for the soul. Instead, resurrection is about the body and the soul, together because they are vivified by God’s spirit. It is God who gives resurrection, which will enable us in this same body, to have the form of God, which is manifested in the virtues and gifts of the Spirit. The beautiful thing is that we can live as resurrected already now, starting today, if in our inner selves we feel the full joy of this promise! Embodying the joy of the merciful father who says, “this brother of yours was dead and has come back to life, was lost and has been found.”
“The first day after the Sabbath” indicates the first day of the new creation, the first of the Sabbaths. With the resurrection, there is no longer anything but one day, the Lord’s Day. Every Sunday, the first day of the week, is therefore a memorial of Christ’s resurrection. A single day in which there is always sunshine, after we have experienced a single long night in which even the day was darkened. When the sun is within us, there is also no alternation of day and night. The women go to the garden “early in the morning,” literally in the late dawn, when the sun begins to brighten the night sky. They had had to wait until the end of the Sabbath, a day of rest, and as soon as they could, they went straight to the tomb, to this garden.
The sepulcher, in Greek μνημεῖον (= mneméion), in its term has a common root with memory (μνημεῖον) and with death and the Moires (Μοῖραι); it is the concrete sign of the consciousness of death that accompanies the lives of humans. Through the tomb, men commemorate the fate that unites all humans; the “humandi” who are destined to return to the humus, the earth. Memory of origins, we are all made of earth, and to the earth destined to return. A stone, in each tomb, thus separates those who have already died from those who have not yet died. Our whole culture may be based on the fear of death, or the experience of women in this garden. If for us everything ends with death, and we return only to the earth, then we can risk living as greedy, devoured by fear. If we remember that in addition to the earth, Adam lives with the life breath of God, it means that we also return to God, and then the perspective changes.
“They found the stone rolled away from the tomb”; that large stone that was put there to separate the living from the dead. Rolled away, as a concrete and visible sign, because there is no more to separate living and dead. Almost in the dark, we imagine the fear and uncertainty, in finding the garden different from the way it was left. When our certainties collapse, even if they cause us pain. They had brought “with them the spices they had prepared,” we can imagine the feelings that animated these women who wanted to honor, with love, the body of their friend. And that instead, they found the stone rolled away, and “when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.” Imagine the terror of the women! There is a void, which represents the center of all our faith. Just as the emptiness, the kenosis, represents the creative act of God, in today’s garden the emptiness is the sign of the new creation, the new birth that took place on the wood of the cross.
The first reaction the women experience is uncertainty. All certainties fall, caught up in aporia — the realization that they are at a limit they have never experienced before. On the one hand is the certainty we all have as “humandi” beings, that everything ends with death. This certainty is questioned, by the way the tomb is found with no signs of theft. A doubt of the memory of what Jesus had said in life, and which no one understood, creeps in. Questioned by the intimate desire in every man for life. Uncertainty is followed by terror; the women are frightened and bow their faces to the ground.
“Behold two men appearing near them in blazing robes;” there are two angels, two bearers of proclamation. Jesus is already risen, Luke is interested in telling how to believe an announcement, because he is speaking to Theophilus and people of the third generation of Christians, that is, all of us who do not know direct witnesses or friends of eyewitnesses. It is these two men who announce, today, the resurrection through a question: “Why do you seek among the dead the one who is alive?” If only we were so blessed in life to meet good teachers who ask us the right questions, who open our eyes and bring us life! They help us rebuild our certainties, starting from our memories.
“Remember what he said to you” sounds today as an invitation to all of us, today at the end of this Laudato Si’ Journey that has led us on these Sundays to a closer look at Scripture. And more generally, it is an invitation to everyday life, accompanied by the remembrance of the words of life that we have received over the years, at Mass in our parish, or by following journeys of in-depth study of Scripture, spiritual exercises, Laudato Si’ Retreats, pilgrimages, and personal encounters with those who have made us taste the beauty of God’s Word. Today we are all invited to remember.
Remembering, from the Latin word recŏrdari, derives from the prefix re-, and from cordis (literally “to bring back to the heart”), is perhaps not so much an act of the mind, because the heart was believed to be the seat of memory. So today we are not to make a philosophical or intellectual gesture, but in remembrance we are called to vibrate our heartstrings, our most spontaneous and beautiful humanity. What must we bring to the heart today? Why does this lead us to believe in the resurrection?
Jesus spoke of his suffering, of his cross. He was not denying the existence of evil, as we men often do to be more charming, and answer the question “how are you doing?” by always saying “all is well!” or as is the case in so many TV commercials glittering with beauty. Jesus had said “that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified,” but not only that. There was also hope in his proclamation of suffering when he said that “he must rise again on the third day.” How much we have to understand about the meaning of this beautiful verb, “must,” repeated in all the gospels and in all the announcements of the passion! It was necessary not because there was a need for sacrifice, God does not want sacrifice, but rather it was necessary because in evil there is us, and God comes to visit us in our freedom and frailties. He always does this, from the Jordan River where He stands silently in line with sinners to when He sits on the ground in the temple with His finger writing on the ground, always silently, so as not to condemn the adulterous woman.
“And they remembered his words.” Each of us today is called to be like these women, who go early in the morning, who prepare spices out of love, but who get caught up in a surprise, who overcome fear, who trust an announcement given by angels. How many angels do we encounter in our lives! Today we are invited to hear words of life, to remember these words that make us come alive. Only in this way do we emerge from anonymity, and indeed only after this action of remembering does the evangelist bother to tell us the names of these women, who “were Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James.” The women believed that love is stronger than death!
Such beautiful, life-filling news! Imagine someone who loves you so much, telling you good news, an achievement. Your heart fills with joy. All the more that the master, the one who in life had given dignity to the woman, who showed a face of mercy, who healed the sick and always sided with the poorest, who kept the promise of his immense love, had risen again! Uncontainable joy for these women, who “announced all this to the Eleven (apostles) and to all the others.” This we are called to do today, to rejoice and proclaim. To carry on this word of mouth that has lasted for two thousand years, in which men and women tell men and women this beautiful news.
Will everything be rosy? Absolutely not. How often are we, ourselves, like the frightened apostles, for whom “those words seemed to them like nonsense and they did not believe them.” Sometimes it seems that people are delusional. This was the feeling of the apostles, people who had known him in life and had been in close contact with him! All the more so us, who have not met him in the flesh. But faith comes only from an encounter, and in the Eleven a desire for life creeps in, along with fear, exactly as it did to the women inside the tomb. Exactly as it happens to us, always.
And indeed it happens that “Peter got up and ran to the tomb, bent down, and saw the burial cloths alone; then he went home amazed at what had happened.” Peter also is confronted with a void. He sees nothing. But that emptiness, that kenosis, is a new creation, is the strongest demonstration Jesus could give of his love. God, in our lives, does not need special effects to show us his infinite love, and the desire for life he has for us. And all this generates wonder, joy, a desire for life.
St. Francis, in the wonderful Paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer, reminds us that: “Our Father, most holy: creator, redeemer, comforter and our savior. Who Art in heaven: In the angels and saints, illuminating them unto knowledge, for You, O Lord, are light; inflaming them unto love, for You, O Lord, are Love; dwelling in them and filling them with blessedness, for You, O Lord, are the highest Good, the eternal Good, from whom is all good and without whom is no good” (FF 266).
We thank the Lord for the tremendous gift of his death and resurrection for us, and for teaching us to trust. Let us pray on this feast day that this new creation may be a seed of joy for us to carry into our daily lives.
We thank you for walking with us, and sharing your reflections, on this journey on the steps of the Sunday Gospel.
Happy Easter of the Lord!
Laudato si’!