Easter Vigil/Sunday Part 3 of Triduum 2020 April 11, 2020
Fr. Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
If you thought the Last Supper was exclusive, or that access to Jesus on the Cross was exclusive, you must realize much more so is what we celebrate now: the resurrection of Jesus Christ; So exclusive that no one gets to be there. The resurrection happens inside a sealed tomb with no witnesses. No radio broadcast, no recordings, no livestream. Just Jesus and his Father. While it is the most exclusive thing Jesus has ever done, it is also his most universal act. Even those who flatly reject Jesus in the Eucharist and on the Cross will nonetheless rise from the dead because he did, even though he did so in secret.
The hiddenness of Christ, the absence of Christ is precisely what opens the way to this universal gift. The women and the apostles find the tomb empty, making Jesus seem even more inaccessible than he was in death – can we not even see his body? But this distance is what spurs the beginning of their proclamation. They run to see, run to tell others “the tomb is empty!” It is a central part of the good news of the Gospel.
And then, only after they experience the bittersweet emptiness of the tomb, the mysterious absence of Jesus, do they see him in his risen glory. Why wait? Could Jesus not have walked out of the tomb to meet Mary on the way? Could he not just visit Peter and John to tell them the tomb is empty? How does seeing him a few minutes after seeing the tomb change the power and reality of his resurrection?
Because we have to experience what we lack before we can receive what we need. Because we need to be excluded from our own expectations before we can be included in his divine plan. There is a mystery here that no poetic or clever preaching can fully unravel. The glorified Jesus is beyond our comprehension. To approach too quickly and with too much familiarity will leave us with a false understanding. Jesus excludes us in order to teach us the distance between what we think we understand and what we enter into with faith. Like trying to drink a river – it is not something we fit into ourselves but rather something into which we are submerged.
This submersion into the waters of Christ’s mysterious resurrection is what we mean by salvation. To “die with Christ” so that our lives can be “hidden with Christ in God.” With Christ… A theme for this Triduum has been representation, the way in which we are made present at events even when we are not physically there. So it is with salvation, with sanctification. You have died with Christ. Are you physically dead? No, yet it is a real death to sin. Hidden with Christ in God Are you physically in heaven? No, yet you have a real share in Christ’s presence in heaven since you are a member of his body.
Still, that hiddenness – that experience of being excluded from what is really going on – that is real. Sadly, it is possible to be lured into falsely thinking that you do know what’s going on. That you have already arrived at the threshold of what is required from you as a child of God and brother or sister of Christ.
Allow me to be blunt. It’s not just possible, it’s commonplace. The overwhelming majority of my experience as a Catholic in general and as a priest in particular shows me that most Catholics do have a false sense of inclusion. In our worship, our moral lives, our interests and habits, we think we “get it” and we lose a sense of transcendence, of awe and humility at the ongoing mystery of our faith. The resurrection of Christ is taken for granted, the share in heaven, taken for granted. We do not spend enough time with the empty tomb to appreciate the risen body.
Perhaps that is what God is up to in this time of separation, of a distant and unusual experience of our religion. Not that he planned to send a virus, but that he is providentially using it to make us more sensitive to the invisible truth behind the visible risen body of Christ. It took a brutal death and an empty tomb to teach even the Apostles what it really meant to know Christ. Why shouldn’t an infectious disease and an empty church serve the same purpose for us?
As it was on the first Easter, the greatest work of God is exclusive, accomplished in secret while Jesus’ many followers are locked in their homes in fear. As it was on the first Easter, that time of exclusion and fear was only temporary. Little by little, the followers of Christ came to see the truth, to leave their homes with courage to rejoice in the gift of salvation. Little by little, that good news spread to the whole world. Little by little, we too will end this distance and isolation. Little by little, if we are wise, we will learn from this to appreciate the mystery of salvation as a mystery… and to proclaim that mystery without apology.
And what is that mystery? Salvation is exclusive. The moment it happened was hidden from us all. Salvation is exclusive. It excludes a worldly life, full of sin and moral compromise and vanity. Salvation is exclusive. It comes to us exclusively through the one man who conquered the grave and rose from the dead.
The good news is that this exclusive savior also gave us a universal Church. A series of relationships and representatives that allow you, me, and all believers to be there at the empty tomb, though our mortal senses tell us otherwise. The good news is that our exclusive savior is also the infinite, all-loving God who has told us that we will see him. Not just in signs, symbols, and representatives… not just through paintings, photos, and livestreams. One day, Christ our life will appear to us and we will appear with him in glory, seeing him face-to-face. That day is not far off. Indeed, it has already dawned.