Easter Vigil 2007

It seems that every year some new attack in popular entertainments is launched against the faith of the Church. I won’t deign to mention the names of particular books or films that have seized the day, capitalizing–with sizeable dividends–upon the weak faith of some Christians and the incredulity of so many others. Such an attempt was made recently in the highly-profiled report that someone claimed to have found the corpse of Jesus. I don’t know the sequel to the story–perhaps many of you do–since I, rather successfully, avoid the intrusion of the media in my life. However, this claim, or at least the supposition that there had yet been the body of Jesus in a burial place challenges not this or that belief of believers, but strikes at the root of the entire Christian faith. As is so often the case, Saint Paul gave us the laconic phrase that captures the essential issue perfectly: ‘If Christ is not raised, your faith is in vain.’ It’s hard for us not to interpret the succession of dubious and mendacious claims by novelists and pseudo-scientists as anything other than so many acts of contempt for Christ and the Church. Diabolical fury is given expression in a variety of forms which need not exclude the ridiculous. There will come a day, however, when He who rose from the dead shall (as Scripture says) “smite His enemies by the word of His mouth.” And when all men see Him seated majestically upon His throne in the clouds of heaven, He will put all his foes under His feet.

If discrediting the Catholic faith is the delight of the godless, one should ask whether the profession of the Catholic faith is the delight of believers? Do we derive as much joy from the Resurrection as those who discredit it? Is the signal Christian event of the Lord’s resurrection our feast of feasts, and not merely the happy riddance of Lent? For anyone to be able to relish a good thing, he must have the sensitivities, the receptivity, needed to appreciate it. If, for example, one had a defective palette, he would not be able to discern and enjoy the various delights of taste. In a similar way, if one has not cultivated his spiritual susceptibility he’s not going to find much to cheer about on Easter. One of the purposes of Lent was to heighten our spiritual powers. If we have done little in the sowing, there will be little in the reaping.

In the Letter to the Romans, we hear this: “If we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him. The death He died, He died to sin..but the life he lives, He lives to God.” I love that somewhat odd idiom of Saint Paul: Christ ‘lives to God.’ If Jesus is ‘alive to God’ in the Resurrection, should it be that we are not alive to God? The dreary, somnolent, and half-ignorant existence of so many Christians is hardly evidence of the vitality of sanctifying grace in the soul. This is enough to make someone wonder–although no one may act as a judge–whether they’re in a state of grace at all.

The Gospels amply report the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. They do not, however, give us any indication of how it took place. We know what happened before and after, but have no certain knowledge of how it came to pass. The intriguing exhibit of the Shroud of Turin suggests that some extraordinary flash of the physical order may have taken place. Faith tells us the essential thing that occurred: the dead body of Jesus (in which his divinity was yet present) again received His soul (which was also still joined to His divinity). His first apparition, according to the revered Tradition, was to his Mother: to Her, logically, since She had been his associate in the Redemption. After this, the risen Jesus was seen by Mary Magdalene; by other women (including Mary of Cleopas and Mary Salome); to Peter; to two disciples on the road to Emmaus; to all the apostles (except Thomas) in the upper rom, and again to the apostles the following week with Thomas present. He was seen also to the disciples on Lake Genesareth; to a crowd of witnesses on a mountain in Galilee, to St. James; and finally to the apostles and many others on the day of His departure into heaven. And there were undoubtably many other appearances as well.

The witness of so many could not have been a fabrication of the Church, a bogus testimony. It was not the written bible that spread the good news of the risen Christ, but the person-to-person word of those who had seen Him. Their report was met with a living faith and an eagerness of their hearers to take hold for themselves that new life of Christ. If we’re spiritually ‘alive to God’ it’s thanks to Easter and to the power the risen Christ transmitted to His Church, His priests and His sacraments.

Tonight our Catholic faith will again confound the eager scoffers, detractors and the ungodly who would rather Jesus have stayed in His tomb. But here He is, radiant and alive, making the Church overflow with joyfulness as she again takes her portion of the life that permeated the risen body of Jesus Christ.