Sunday, April 20, 2025

Resurrection of the Lord – Year C

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1st reading: Acts 10,34:37a.43-XNUMX

Psalm: 117 (118), 1.2, 16-17, 22-23

2rd reading: Colossians 3,1-4

Gospel: John 20,1-9

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Blessed are we that the Gospel tells us this scene that describes what the apostles saw, and describes how to look... the tomb is open when Mary Magdalene or Peter or the disciple whom Jesus loved lean into the tomb; what do they see? They see that everything is in place as it was the previous evening, that nothing has moved, simply the body is no longer in the shroud. But the shroud has not been removed to take the naked body: the body has disappeared from inside the shroud, which has suddenly collapsed, no longer containing the body, but in the same position as it was when the body was there. And the shroud that surrounds the head is in its place, inside the shroud. What happened? Where has the body gone? The Gospel uses three different verbs for the vision.

There is vision, which simply records things, but does nothing with them. All day long, we see many things, but we do nothing with them.

There is the vision that challenges and calls for interpretation: the simplest is the red light that invites you to stop. But there are other things that we see, and we begin to question ourselves to understand what we see.

And then there is the vision which is about understanding what is happening.

Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, speaks of the “eyes of the heart” (Eph 1,18:75). Saint-Exupéry in “The Little Prince” says: “One sees clearly only with the heart.” Thérèse uses this expression once in one of her letters: my heart sees clearly that… (Cf. LT XNUMX)

And we have in this gospel these three verbs.

The disciple whom Jesus loved came in, see (βλέπει), but he doesn't do anything with what he sees. He just took a look.

Pierre comes back to him, he look, contemplate (θεωρεῖ). He tries to understand what he sees and he does not understand. Finally, the disciple whom Jesus loved comes again. And there we are told with a third verb in Greek: he saw and he believed (καὶ εἶδεν, καὶ ἐπίστευσεν). This is the vision of the heart. It understands what it sees. It understands what it has before its eyes. Or rather, the encounter of the event that it has before its eyes and the word of the

Lord allows him to interpret what he sees, at the same time as it allows him to understand the word of the Lord.

How do we look at things? How do we look at the world? How do we look at the events of our lives and how do we seek to get into the habit of allowing the Word of God, and in particular the word of Jesus, to shed light on the events we experience? For the Gospel tells us of some of the Lord's deeds and actions to teach us to see how the Lord acts, so that we can decipher the Lord's action in our lives. It is therefore a matter of learning to read events in the light of the Holy Scriptures, in the light of the Word of God. And if you read a little of the writings of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, you will see that she lived this deeply. Sacred Scripture is truly a light for her: the word of the Lord that comes to reveal in her own life, Thérèse, what God is doing, what God wants to do, what Jesus wants to do. And she will speak very little of the risen Jesus or the resurrection of Jesus, but she will often say: Jesus makes me feel that... Jesus made me feel that…, or else Jesus told me that..., Jesus tells us that... Does Thérèse take her desires for reality? No; she truly allows herself to be enlightened in faith by the Word of God.

Brothers and sisters, we must take time to meditate on the Holy Scriptures, beginning with the Gospels. If you have never read a Gospel in its entirety, well, I invite you to do so during Easter. Take whichever one you wish, but read it from one end to the other to try to contemplate Jesus, to look at Jesus: what he does, what he says, asking in prayer God our Father to reveal his Son to you: Father, reveal your Son in me.

The event of the resurrection is not just an event of time, an event that took place one day somewhere on our earth, in this case in Jerusalem, almost 2000 years ago. It is also an event that plays out in each of our lives. You heard in the second reading what the apostle tells us: “You have passed through death, and your life remains hidden with Christ in God. You have already been raised, so seek the things that are above.”  On the day of our baptism, we received an incredible grace: to have been placed with the risen Jesus. We benefit from the resurrection of Jesus without having ourselves passed through physical death, but we have already experienced something of the mystery of death, with Jesus, in baptism, and already the life of the risen Jesus flows in our veins. The power by which the Father raised Christ from the realm of the dead and made him ascend into heaven to sit at his right hand, this power, Paul tells us in the letter to the Ephesians (Eph 1,20:XNUMX), is this power that he puts to work in our lives as believers. We are continually caught up in the upward movement that takes us from death to life. We are continually, by the Holy Spirit, drawn from death to life, but this does not happen without us.

In one of her letters to her sister Celine, Saint Therese writes:

Jesus has such an incomprehensible love for us that he wants us to have a share in the salvation of souls. He does not want to do anything without us. (LT 135)

Thérèse writes this thinking that the Lord is calling her, as well as Céline, as well as all the Carmelites, to work for the salvation of all souls, for the salvation of the world, through the offering of their lives and their incessant prayer.

Yes, but we cannot exclude our own soul from all these. And we can hear these words of Thérèse for ourselves: Jesus has such an understandable love for you that he wants you to have a part in the salvation of your soul. He does not want to do anything without you.

And so, let us not wait blandly for God to do things for us, for Jesus to do for us what we do not do... but let us do with him. He does not want to do anything without us, because he calls us to do nothing without him. Without me, said Jesus, you can't do anything (Jn 15,5:XNUMX). Jesus does not say: you cannot do much: he tells us “you can't do anything".

Affirming our faith in the resurrection of Jesus means deciding to live with the living Jesus. To do what? Peter told us in the first reading, he summarized the life of Jesus in a few words: “Wherever he went, he did good.” ».

What does God expect of us? That wherever we go, we do good. It's not complicated to remember. Don't tell me that the Christian life is complicated to understand! Wherever I go, I am called to do good, through Jesus, with Him, and in Him. Not by relying on my own strength, my own patience, my own gentleness, but by constantly asking the Risen Christ who is with us to give me his gentleness, to give me his patience, to give me his charity, to give me his peace, to give me his joy, to give me his mercy so that I may live them and thus transmit them.

The world does not see the risen Jesus. We ourselves do not see the risen Jesus, but the world sees Christians.

Just as Jesus cries out to Philip: "But Philip, who sees me, sees the Father." (Jn 14,9:XNUMX), if we truly live from the risen Christ, if in our poverty we seek to receive everything from Christ, then perhaps we will be able to say: but my brother, who sees me, sees Jesus...

This is the grace that God wants to give us for the world.

If I am here this morning, it is because the Lord has called me, established me and sent me on a mission so that I may bear fruit, doing good through Him, with Him and in Him.

This is how I will witness the resurrection.

Amen

Father Emmanuel Schwab, Rector of the Shrine