EASTER SUNDAY

Good morning and Happy Easter.  I extend to you the joy and happiness of this Easter Day and the next fifty days of the Easter Season. 

My prayerful wish is that each of you has a grateful heart for the gift of your faith that allows you to believe in the Mystery of the Resurrection of Christ and the promise of New and Eternal Life.

For some of us, we have heard the Easter account so often that we tend to take it for granted and not let it impact us personally. For others of us, it is such a profound mystery that we meditate upon it, marvel at it and pray over it daily.  We plunge ourselves wholeheartedly into this love relationship between God and us.  This is our love story with Jesus Christ, our personal Savior.

In places like Lake Tahoe, where changes in the seasons are the norm, we can readily identify with Easter as a sign of new life.  Most of the snow is gone, and the plants are beginning to bloom.  Spring is in the air, and new life is dawning. It is Easter.           

Make no mistake about it, the Resurrection is a mystery.  It is not to be dismissed because of its greatness. 

To help make the mystery of the Resurrection more understandable, Christians from the time of Christ have used symbols to try to grasp the meaning of this mystery of our Faith.  For example:

• Wearing something new on Easter symbolizes the new life Christ secured for us through His resurrection. My Irish grandmother would say, “If you didn’t wear something new on Easter, bad luck will follow you.”  My French grandfather would scare us kids by saying, “If you don’t wear something new on Easter, the dogs will spit on you and the birds will dirty on you.”
• The Easter lily is another common symbol of the Resurrection.  Notice the shape of the lily, it is long and narrow like a tomb.  When it opens up and comes into full bloom, it becomes a beautiful flower.
• Or how about the butterfly?  It represents the Resurrection because the cocoon breaks to give life to a graceful butterfly.

But perhaps the Easter egg most clearly describes the Resurrection. 

The story is told of Jeremy, a special-needs student who was twelve years old but still in the second grade.  He was a slow learner, he made unusual noises and could do little by himself.  To most kids, he was often an object of ridicule and bullying.  Even his teacher, Miss Miller, would get frustrated with him. 

Miss Miller gave the class an assignment before Easter.  She asked each student to take an empty plastic egg home and bring it back the next day with something inside the egg that represented new life. 

The following day, Miss Miller began to open each of the eggs.  The first plastic egg had a small plastic Easter lily in it.  The second one had a butterfly.  And the third egg that Miss Miller opened was empty. 

Miss Miller hastily guessed it was Jeremy’s egg and laid it down without a comment.  Jeremy quickly said, “Miss Miller, aren’t you going to talk about my egg?”  

“Jeremy,” she said, “your egg is empty.” 

He looked her right in the eyes and replied, “Yes, but Jesus’s tomb was empty too, and His empty tomb is a sign of new life.” 

Three months later, Jeremy died, and all of his classmates placed empty plastic eggs around his casket. 

The empty tomb represents New Life, Eternal Life and Resurrected Life.

Our Gospel makes it clear that when Mary Magdalene first discovered the empty tomb, she ran back to tell the other disciples that someone had taken the body of her friend.  At first, she didn’t believe Christ had risen from the dead. Then Peter and John ran to the tomb. 

John would have been a contender in the Boston Marathon, as he arrived at the tomb first.  He waited for Peter out of respect, to let Peter enter the tomb first.  Peter’s initial reaction to the missing body was simply confusion. He saw the burial cloths.  He must have assumed that the body was not stolen, as they would have taken the body wrapped in the protective burial cloths.  For Peter, the body was just missing.  John, on the other hand, went in, saw the empty tomb and believed. 

Isn’t our faith like one of the three, or perhaps a combination of all three: the doubting, the confused and the believing?

The Resurrection is a mystery, but not to be dismissed because of its greatness.  The Resurrection is a mystery, but not to be solved like a crime.  The Resurrection is a mystery, the promise of new life for all who believe.

Christ is Risen.  He has indeed.