The Resurrection c20: Part 1 vv 1-8 The Empty Tomb

Posted on January 22nd 2012 in St. John's Gospel

The movement from the burial to the discovery of the Empty Tomb is held together by a thin thread of evidence, that of the beloved disciple and Mary Magdalen who were both present at the foot of the Cross, and who knew the location of the empty tomb. The greatest act of God, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, took place in silence and away from the sight of all humanity.

The first discovery on Sunday morning is made by Mary Magdalen who does not enter the tomb but returns to tell the others. Her first reaction is a very human one, ‘they have taken him away’, and shows any sense in the possibility of the resurrection. Despite her incomprehension Peter and John run towards the tomb, and the account recognises the relative importance of Peter with respect to John. As leader of the apostles, Peter enters first, but it is John, the beloved disciple, who makes the connection between the folded cloths and the resurrection of Jesus. Lazarus had come out of the tomb bound in linen sheets. The risen Jesus left the tomb through His own power, the cloths neatly folded on the shelf. St John saw what has been described as ‘the vanquished signs of death’. The beloved disciple moves in a few verses from hearing the unbelief of Mary Magdalen, through to the full faith of seeing and believing. This though is not the full Easter faith which must wait till the risen Jesus has imparted the Holy Spirit to the Apostles that evening.

The account of finding the empty tomb finishes on a curious note that the protagonists in the account failed to grasp. This was that the divine reality of Jesus rising from the dead is contained within the Scriptures. This is not explicitly stated anywhere in the Old Testament. There are merely allusions to the Resurrection: i.e. God is God of the living and not of the dead. Such an in-depth analysis requires the Holy Spirit which had not yet been given at the time of the discovery. The implication is that the body of Apostles, the nascent Church, is the proper place to read the Scriptures and discover its deepest meaning. 

The Gospel invites the believer into a new relationship with God through Jesus Christ

Posted on January 22nd 2012 in Weekly messages

The sentiment may sometimes be understandable but to go through life thinking ‘I am not going to listen to what the Church tells me to do’ betrays an essentially teenage mentality towards faith. The Gospel rarely tells the believer what to do face to face, something which it would be powerless to enforce in any case. Instead the Gospel speaks of what God is doing in Jesus Christ, and the consequences of His coming and the establishing of the kingdom of God. Jesus counsels repentance, but how one reacts is a matter of personal choice. There is nothing forced about it. The unenforceable quality of faith is something many find difficult to grasp and helps explain the weak sense of evangelisation that exists in this country and elsewhere in Europe amongst Catholics. The Catholic faith requires an adult relationship with Christ, not the attitude of a teenager to a seemingly authoritarian parent. The thought of faith being encompassed by such a relationship is not going to be attractive to anyone looking to meet the living God. The Catholic sophisticate might look down upon the certainties of the Evangelical but their firmly held beliefs in the advantage of believing in Christ often places them at an advantage to Catholic diffidence in a world bereft of meaning.

This revolution in understanding the Catholic faith will help explain why Jesus’ first public act is to gather four future apostles around him to form some nascent community. This little community will be the place to develop the practice of the Christ life in company with the Master. Here nothing can be forced, even when there are difficult lessons to earn about humility, dedication and service. The continuous support of Jesus, however gives the strength to undertake this long journey of formation.

The four apostles are told that they will become fishers of men, and the immediacy of their response to the divine call should alert us to the necessity to choose before the coming of Jesus into the world. The little detail that they dropped their nets points to the fact that the Gospel message is not a trap to lure the unwary. Indeed the Gospel message resonates with the deepest longings of the heart. That is why it need not be imposed; it must always be accepted freely. Therefore the message needs to be preached by those formed through the word. Hence the journey of the apostles, disciples and crowds in the Gospel becomes our own journey as well. To impart a message that resonates with the depths of human conscience requires the evangelist’s and our heart to be so formed as well.

This process of formation need not be off-putting since Jesus offers the Church, and each of its members, the gift of His Holy Spirit, which uses the limited resources of the believer to impart a divine message. The co-operation from us is simply that we accept that the Gospel message is not something imposed upon us, and that we recognise it as a liberation from sin, from unrealisable objectives, from false gods, and an entry into a truly human way of life. There is a value in knowing Jesus Christ, even if personally one finds the journey towards full Christian life a difficult one to undertake.

The Passion Part 5: The Death and Burial of Jesus 19:28-42

Posted on January 8th 2012 in St. John's Gospel

The death of Jesus demonstrates the life giving quality of His love that He showed in the Washing of the Feet, the beginning of the Passion Narrative. He did love the Apostles to the end, and therefore St John’s account of the death has a conscious, almost serene quality about it. The fulfilment of the Scriptures (the Old Testament) with regard to the death of Jesus takes place both in the general and in the particular sense. The general fulfilment of the Passion predictions, death according to the Scriptures, is completed with details such as ‘I am thirsty’, (from Ps 69:21) about the giving of vinegar for thirst. This divine thirst also intimates the imminent completion of His mission. This is the cup that, whilst in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus declares that He must drink. This action, along with the words, ‘It is accomplished’, immediately precedes His death. The hyssop used to give vinegar to Jesus points back to the sticks used by the Israelites on the night of their departure across the Red Sea to mark the lintels of their houses. Jesus is the Lamb of God who dies on the same day that the lambs are sacrificed for the Passover.

The giving up of the Spirit is the third, according to the tradition of the Church, of three symbolic actions that mark the beginning of the Church in St John’s Gospel. The first, failing to tear the seamless robe, the giving of His Mother to the Beloved Disciple, and the third symbolic action, the handing-over of the Spirit, all point to essential features of the newly founded Church, is unity, its catholicity, its sanctity.

The reception of the Holy Spirit will become tangible in the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, symbolised by the blood and water flowing from the pierced side of Jesus. The quick death of Jesus meant that the soldiers did not break His legs as they did to the other two thieves. Instead, they pierced His side and unconsciously fulfilled two prophecies that ‘no bone would be broken’ (of the Paschal Lambs, Exodus 12:46) and ‘they will look upon the one they have pierced’ (19:37; Zechariah 12:10). The emphasis on eye-witness accounts points to the necessary connection between the death of Jesus, and the gift of the Holy Spirit and. with that gift, the sacraments of the Church. The love that lasted till the end has become the source of life for every Christian. The Cross is the source of new life.