As the Church's great celebration of Easter was made possible by the passion and death of Jesus, our share in its healing, transforming, and saving power is made possible by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Easter Sunday 2020

There was a body in the grave. It was cold; it was definitely a dead corpse, it did not take a breath, and the heart did not pump. You could see it; you could touch it. It looked no different than any other corpse. For those of you who have had a realistic experience with a dead body, you know that it is a profound experience. When one sees a genuinely dead body, a corpse, there is no doubt that it is dead.
In my training as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) for working on a volunteer rescue squad, I was instructed over and over how to check to see if a body was dead. Check the breathing, check the pulse, recheck. However, when my first opportunity during Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) on a real body came, there was no doubt the person was dead. It was obvious.

The disciples of Jesus had such an experience with the dead body of Jesus. They saw it hanging on a tree. They saw the spear go deep into the side and, without a doubt, pierce the heart. They saw the blood and water come forth. They saw the corpse laid into Mary's arms. The women touch it as they prepared it for burial.

What a profound experience then, it must have been to see the empty tomb. What vivid realism it must have impressed on Peter as he saw where the body was laid. This was the place without a doubt that the soldiers were guarding. These professionals would never let their guard down for fear of the punishment, which was the punishment of death.

St. John's Gospels is filled with words to describe this profound experience of Peter. The whole scene in the tomb paints a picture of the resurrection. However, elements of this are lost in the translation, which is more apparent in the Greek language. In the phrase "The linen cloths lying there" the Greek indicates that the clothes were flattened, deflated as if they were emptied when the body of Jesus rose—as if it had come out of the clothes and bandages without their being taken off, passing right through them (just as Jesus entered the upper room when the doors were locked). The Greek says the clothes were fallen, flat, lying, after Jesus' body—which had filled them—left them. One can readily understand the amazement and realism that this conveyed on the witnesses to it.

The language to describe the shroud that wrapped Jesus' head, says that it was not on the top of the clothes but to one side. It was like the clothes stilled rolled up, but unlike them, it still had a certain volume, like a container, possibly due to the stiffness given it by the ointments. It reminds me of paper mâché formed around a balloon, and then the balloon popped.

These details point to a body being raised in a heavenly manner, which transcended the laws of nature. It was not just a body being reanimated as happened in the case of Lazarus, who, by the way, had to be unbound before he could walk and who would later die again. Because of this unique experience of the state of the linens left behind the two Apostles realized that it was not a question of a robbery, which is what Mary Magdalene had thought.

This realistic experience of the empty tomb left many facts perceptible to the human senses. However, the resurrection still requires faith to be accepted. Christ's resurrection is a real, historical fact: there was a dead body, and it came back to life, literally. It was a real physical body that had its soul reunited to it. This physicality was apparent because Thomas could touch it-he put his hands into the nail holes and into the pierced side, "My Lord and my God." But yet, there was something also different about the body. It now had spiritual properties as well; it could pass through the burial cloth and walls. It could no longer suffer damage, decay, pain; it could no longer change or be separated from the soul.

The resurrection of Jesus, although historical, is also a supernatural event; that is, it is far beyond our capacity in this life to totally understand. It transcends sense experience, it requires a special gift of God to accept it as a fact with certainty, and that gift is the gift of faith. As St. Thomas Aquinas says in his great work the Summa Theologica, "the individual arguments taken alone are not sufficient proof of Christ's resurrection but taken together, in a cumulative way, they manifest it perfectly. Particularly important in this regard are the spiritual proofs, especially the angelic testimony and Christ's own post-resurrection words confirmed by miracles” (cf Jn3:13,; Mt 16:21; 17:22; 20:18).

This gift of faith in the resurrection is what we as believing Catholic Christians are celebrating with great joy this day. The apostles' faith is strengthened through the Holy Triduum, the time from Thursday evening to Sunday morning. We, too, have just passed through this time, symbolically, in the Church's celebration of this Holy time. But Christ has left us something even more remarkable to strengthen our faith and joy in the resurrection. He has left us the great mystery of the Holy Eucharist.

"At every celebration of the Eucharist, we are spiritually brought back to the pascal Triduum: to the events of the evening of Holy Thursday, to the Last Supper and to what followed it. We return to Good Friday, the hour of our redemption. In spirit and through the power and authority of the Holy priesthood, as the priest who acts in the person of Jesus Christ, we are all able to be present at the foot of the Cross, present alongside St. John and the Blessed Virgin Mary. "This is the wood of the Cross on which hung the Savior of the World, come let us adore! And we are present too at the empty tomb and are able to proclaim, "The Lord is risen from the tomb; for our sake, he hung on the Cross, Alleluia."

The Holy Mass makes present the Sacrifice of the Cross; it does not add to that sacrifice; it does not multiply it. It makes Christ's one definitive sacrifice present in our time. But, the Holy Mass not only makes truly present the mystery of Christ's passion and death but also the mystery of the resurrection which crowned his sacrifice (EE:14).

As the Church's great celebration of Easter was made possible by the passion and death of Jesus, our share in its healing, transforming, and saving power is made possible by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

At every Mass, we are enabled to be present at all of these events, not in mind, but in reality. And not only are we able to be present sacramentally, truly—we are able to share, here on earth already, in the Joy of that eternal Easter in heaven. The Holy Mass makes truly present, not only the saving events of our salvation but makes truly, sacramentally present the one who is our salvation—Jesus Christ and his self-emptying sacrifice of love for us. And so, at Mass, we, by our baptism, are enabled to offer ourselves as priest-victims in a loving oblation of a gift of self to the Father through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit by willingly uniting ourselves to Jesus' one and only Sacrifice of Love. We are called with our reserve to place our heart on the paten-for love has no reserve. To the extent that we give the gift of our self, we are enabled to receive Him into our bodies and souls and be transformed into His Body, into Love incarnate to become other "christs" for our world.

Those who feed on Christ in the Eucharist need not wait until the hereafter to receive eternal life. In essence, they already begin to possess it on earth as the first fruits of that eternal life. For in the Eucharist we also receive the pledge of our bodily resurrection at the end of the world; "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day: This pledge of the future resurrection comes from the fact, that the flesh of the Son of Man, given as food, is his body in its glorious state after the resurrection. With the Eucharist, we digest, as it were the "secret" of the resurrection. For this reason, Saint Ignatius of Antioch rightly defined the Eucharist as "the medicine for immortality and antidote to death."

I took the last few sentences from an Encyclical on the Holy Eucharist released on Holy Thursday in 2003 by St. John Paul the Second. I recommend all of you to read this incredible Letter. In this encyclical, St. John Paul points out that the Joy of the Resurrection is more than just a pipe dream in your life and mine. It is a tangible and livable reality because Jesus, the crucified, and the resurrection one, is still in our midst.

He is truly here, not just in our hearts, not only in the proclamation of the word, not just in our community gathered, Jesus Christ is still physically with us. Let me repeat it, Jesus Christ is still physical with us, in his resurrected body, a real body, albeit a glorified one. Jesus Christ Emmanuel, He who promised he would be with us until the end of the ages, becomes physically, sacramentally present, IN HIS BODY, BLOOD, SOUL, and DIVINITY at this very Mass and He comes into us at Holy Communion. For this reason, we know the grave is empty; there are no bones of Jesus in the ground anywhere. He lives again in His body, which is present in its entirety in the Holy Eucharist.

Do not go looking for him when someone says he is here or there, for we know where our Lord is; He is in the Holy Eucharist, the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. And He is available to us, along with the power of his divinity and victory of his resurrection at every Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. This truth is the reason for our Easter Joy! A joy that is real, because the Eucharist is real. A Joy that is obtainable in the midst of our sorrow, pain, and death, because Jesus suffered sorrow, pain, and death. But he has defeated death—He has risen! Jesus is the resurrection and the Life. Every Holy Mass is an Easter because At every Holy Mass, we can truly encounter the Risen Lord, Jesus in the Holy Eucharist…This is a real encounter with Him in His resurrected and now living body. If we have faith, if we offer ourselves and all we have entirely to Him, He will transform us more and more into His other-self. We will become instruments of His love and mercy for the world… Our senses fail to see the Risen one, but faith alone rooted in the words of Christ handed down to us by the Apostle is sufficient.

O Come let us adore His resurrected body at this Mass in the Holy Eucharist which I, acting in His person, or better yet, which He acting in my person is about to make present—physically—sacramentally—truly, on this altar of true Sacrifice.

Let us, as St. John Paul the Second has taught at the beginning of this new millennium, put out into the deep of Jesus' love by offering ourselves totally to Him, with Him, in Him, to the Father. Let us adore Jesus--beholding the face of Jesus through the eyes of the Virgin Mary, she who will be with us to help us in our offering of ourselves. For we are weak, and we need a mother's help. Let us pray to Jesus through her, "Hail true body that was born of Mary, the Virgin, that truly suffered and was offered in sacrifice on the Cross for man and that gave forth true blood from its pierced side. Be to us a foretaste of heaven…" We give our hearts totally to you; Help us give our hearts totally to him at Holy Mass.
HAPPY EASTER to all of you. Christus resurrexit! Resurrexit vere! Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!