First reading: Acts 10:34a,37–43
Peter proceeded to speak and said: “You know what has happened all over Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power. He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.
“We are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree. This man God raised on the third day and granted that he be visible, not to all the people, but to us, the witnesses chosen by God in advance, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commissioned us to preach to the people and testify that he is the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness, that everyone who believes in him will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.”
Second reading: Col. 3:1–4
Brothers and sisters: If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.
Gospel: Jn. 20:1–9
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.
In other words
by Fr. Antonio Pernia, SVD (Divine Word Institute of Mission Studies, Tagaytay City)
The Gospel reading today presents us with the empty tomb of Jesus. In a certain sense, the empty tomb is a twofold invitation for us—an invitation to believe like Peter and the other disciple, and an invitation to love like Mary of Magdala.
First, the invitation to come to the tomb, like Peter and the other disciple, and to enter and see and believe. To believe that, as the World Social Forum puts it, another world is possible—not the world of Good Friday but that of Easter Sunday, not the world of violence and terrorism but that of dialogue and peace, not the world of injustice and death but that of human solidarity and new life.
Perhaps the signs of a new world are too few and far between. And therefore it is difficult to believe that things can be different. There are only “the burial cloths and the cloth that had covered his head…” But they are enough to make us believe; enough to believe that Easter Sunday transforms a terrible Friday into a Good Friday, that the cross is not the end, that a new world is coming to birth. And the persons who believe become themselves signs of this newness, just as Peter and the other disciple became witnesses of the Resurrection. Thus, the empty tomb invites us to believe like Peter and the other disciple so that we ourselves can become signs of a new world.
Secondly, the invitation to tarry a little longer, like Mary of Magdala, by the tomb. The invitation not to rush back home, like the men disciples, but to remain and waste some time by the tomb, and thus to be called by name by the Risen Lord and encounter him living and alive. We may need Mary’s ardent love for the Lord or her fervent yearning to see him. The invitation is precisely to develop in us this great love, this profound longing for the Lord, in such a way that we learn to see the Risen Lord in every gardener, every person, every man and woman we encounter on our way. Part of the meaning of the Resurrection is precisely this—that Jesus now lives in each one of us since he has given us his Spirit. Thus, the empty tomb invites us to love like Mary of Magdala and learn to see the Risen Lord in every person, in each of our brothers and sisters. Only then can a new world begin.
May the Resurrection of Jesus be a new beginning for us and for our world. May it be indeed the “first day of a new week.”