Daily Mass Gospel Reflection- EASTER SUNDAY

Word on Fire Ministry ^ | 4.9.23 | Bishop Robert Barron

[MurphsLaw]

EASTER SUNDAY
John 20:1-9

Friends, our Easter Gospel
is John’s startlingly concise account of the Resurrection.

The Easter declaration, properly understood,
has always been and still is an explosion, an earthquake, a revolution.
For the Easter faith—
on clear display from the earliest days of the Christian movement—
is that Jesus of Nazareth, a first-century Jew from the northern reaches of the Promised Land,
who had been brutally put to death by the Roman authorities,
is alive again through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Once we’ve come to some clarity about the Resurrection claim itself,
we can begin to see why it still matters so massively.
If the Resurrection is only a bland symbol
or a projection of our desires,
then tyrants have nothing to fear from it.
But if it is a fact of history, an act of the living God in space and time,
then sinners have real cause to repent.

A second great implication of the Resurrection is
that heaven and earth are coming together.
The hope of ancient Israel was not a jailbreak,
not an escape from this world,
but precisely the unification of heaven and earth in a great marriage.
Recall a central line from the prayer that Jesus bequeathed to his Church:
“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
The bodily Resurrection of Jesus—
“the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep”—
is the powerful sign that the two orders are in fact coming together.

[MurphsLaw]

+++On the first day of the week,
Mary of Magdala came to the tomb
early in the morning,
while it was still dark,
and saw the stone removed from the tomb.
So she ran and went to Simon Peter
and to the other disciple whom
Jesus loved, and told them,
“They have taken the Lord from the tomb,
and we don’t know where they put him.”
So Peter and the other disciple
went out and came to the tomb.
They both ran, but the other
disciple ran faster than Peter
and arrived at the tomb first;
he bent down and saw the burial
cloths there, but did not go in.
When Simon Peter arrived after him,
he went into the tomb and saw
the burial cloths there,
and the cloth that had covered his head,
not with the burial cloths but
rolled up in a separate place.
Then the other disciple also went in,
the one who had arrived at the tomb first,
and he saw and believed.
For they did not yet understand the Scripture
that he had to rise from the dead.+++