The Empty Tomb: “He must rise from the dead.”

Today we hear the account of Easter Sunday morning, when Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early.  She must have been shocked and distressed to find that the body of Jesus was not there.  Mary ran to Simon Peter to tell him, “They have taken the Lord of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

So Peter and John run to the tomb.  John gets there first but it is Peter who enters the tomb first.  He sees the linen cloths lying there and then the face cloth which had been on the head of Jesus folded up in a place by itself.  

Then John enters the tomb and we hear, “…he saw and believed.”  In this Gospel, John is held up as the role-model of discipleship.  The disciples had already been told by Jesus that he would go up to Jerusalem, suffer and die but rise again on the third day.  They had failed to understand this.

During Lent, I asked children at both schools why they believed in the Resurrection of Jesus.  Even the youngest pupils gave some wonderful answers.  They spoke about the accounts in the Bible, the way that witnesses have spoken about faith, the way faith has been handed on through generations.

Some of the pupils spoke about prayer and said that they know that God is there when they pray and that the they experience him when they come to church.  Easter is a time to celebrate our faith and to think again why it is we believe in the Resurrection.

Like those first disciples, we have been told about Jesus’ Resurrection again and again.  We have forty days now up until the Ascension to really ponder the mystery again, so that we can each experience a personal Resurrection of faith within us.  

God bless, Fr Kevin.