Easter Sunday, Year B
First reading: Acts 10:34a, 36-43
Second reading: Col 3:1-4
Gospel reading: Jn 20:1-18

Christ is risen! The tomb is empty! “He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.” Our salvation has been accomplished!

At the Easter Vigil, the Church recounts our salvation history in capsule form. In the beginning, God created heaven and earth, the sun and the moon, the sky, the sea, the land, the plants, and the animals, all for Adam and Eve. “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.”

God planned to make Adam and Eve divine, like himself, but they wanted divinity without him, before him, and not in accordance with him. Thus they committed the original sin, a sin of pride, cutting themselves off from God and making themselves and all their descendants subject to death.

However, God did not abandon them. He called Abraham and tested him by asking him to kill his only son. Abraham passed the test, and God made a covenant with him, promising that his offspring would bring blessing to every nation.

Abraham’s descendants became enslaved, but, through Moses, God told them how to save themselves from the angel of death: to sacrifice a lamb and paint the doorframes with its blood. God saved them from slavery, leading them like a pillar of fire.

God continued his love for his people. “Your maker is your husband,” he said; “the Lord of hosts is his name.” Patiently he wooed them back after each betrayal.

“I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you,” he promised. “You shall be my people, and I will be your God.”

At Easter, these promises are fulfilled, for now “Christ has ransomed us with his Blood, and paid for us the price of Adam’s sin to our eternal Father!” Truly, “this is our Passover feast, when Christ, the true Lamb, is slain, whose blood consecrates the homes of all believers.”

On this night, “heaven is wedded to earth and man is reconciled to God!” Its power “dispels all evil, washes guilt away, restores lost innocence, brings mourners joy; it casts out hatred, brings us peace, and humbles earthly pride.”

“Father, how wonderful your care for us!” the Church exclaims in ecstasy. “How boundless your merciful love!” Think of it: “to ransom a slave, you gave away your Son. O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!”

In the light of the Easter candle, from which we light our own small candles, she prays, “Accept this Easter candle, a flame divided but undimmed, a pillar of fire that glows to the honour of God .... May the morning star which never sets find this flame still burning: Christ, that morning star who came back from the dead, and shed his peaceful light on all mankind.”

In baptism, St. Paul said, “our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed.” However, “if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.” Accordingly, we must set our minds “on things that are above, not on things that are on earth,” for we have died, and our true life is “hidden with Christ in God.”

“Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father,” Jesus told Mary Magdalene on Easter Sunday morning.

He was speaking to the whole Church, said Pope St. Leo the Great: “I would not have you come to me as to a human body, nor yet recognize me by fleshly perceptions: I put you off for higher things, I prepare greater things for you: when I have ascended to my Father, then you shall handle me more perfectly and truly, for you shall grasp what you cannot touch and believe what you cannot see.”

Father Hawkswell is again teaching “The Catholic Faith in Plain English.” All the materials (video and print) are available online free of charge at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Session 29, “Virtue,” will be available April 4.