topleft05.jpg (18208 bytes)HOMILY
Easter Sunday (A)
24 April 11
 


 

Over the years, one of the most puzzling aspects of the narratives of the Resurrection for me was that none of Jesus’ disciples recognized him after the Resurrection.  I oftentimes thought that, if Jesus did rise from the dead in his body, surely those who were closest to him—Mary of Magdala, Peter, and John—would have recognized him immediately.  But, they didn’t.

In my mind, that raised the question: Why not?

That question was answered when I read the book, The Prophets, by Abraham Heschel.  In that book, Rabbi Heschel discussed the Hebrew word “nabî”—to see—and how ordinary Jews saw things differently from how the Jewish prophets saw things.

For the Jews—and for many of us—we “see what we know,” Rabbi Heschel wrote.  That is, we learn something (for example, we read a psychology book) and impose that knowledge upon the world around us.  We interpret reality by imposing what we know upon it, as it were, upon the world “from without.”  If we don’t know something, then we cannot see it because we don’t know what that reality is.

The prophets, however, “know what they see.”  That is, prophets enter into reality itself and allow its meaning to unfold before their very eyes, as it were, “from within” the world.  Unencumbered by what they know, the prophets experienced the reality before them as it was and as it unfolded before their very eyes.  They “know what they see.”

Perhaps somewhat more concretely, all of this may have to do with the aphorism we’ve all heard, “Seeing is believing.”  That is, what the disciples were looking for after the Resurrection wasn’t what they saw and, hence, they not only couldn’t see, but they also couldn’t believe.

For example, when the disciples went to the tomb that first Easter morning, I’d think they probably didn’t want to take a look into the tomb.  After all, why would any of them want to reawaken and recount all over again those tragic events of Good Friday?  Why in the world would they want to take another look at the bruised, battered, beaten, broken, and now decaying body of the one they had called “Teacher”?

Yet, what the disciples expected to see—what they knew—didn’t happen to be what God in His Divine Providence had in store for them to see: an empty tomb.  So, the disciples believed once again what they knew, that is, what they had been told: “The body of the Lord has been stolen.”  They were blind to what all of this meant—they couldn’t enter into the reality God had placed before them—because they saw what they knew.

I’d propose that many of us engage in this behavior quite a bit.  We set out to see something—to see what we know and have already decided we want to see—and end up being blind.  We hear of someone’s reputation before we even meet that person and we use that information to judge that person.  Someone wrongs us and, because of that, we see nothing other than what we know through our personal experience.  We categorize individuals, robbing them of their distinctive identity by attributing a group’s characteristics to particular individuals within that group.  All the while we are blind to the reality before us.

About this behavior, the commentator of the Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keeler, once noted: “Sometimes, you look reality in the eye and deny it.”

John Berger also discusses this all-too-common behavior in his book, Ways of Seeing, asserting that there is an “unsettled relation” between what we see and what we know.  Berger writes:

Each evening we see the sun set.  We know that the earth is turning away from it.  Yet, the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.
 

In this sense, what the disciples saw when they beheld the Risen Lord—after all, he had promised them that he would rise on the third day—didn’t fit what they knew—the explanation they already had in their minds.

The obvious spiritual problem all of these images present—prophets, Garrison Keeler, and John Berger—is how—like Jesus’ disciples—we impose what we know upon what we see which, in turns, makes us blind to what God has prepared for us to see.

What might that be?

It has to do, I think, with the unexpected rather than the predictable.  Jokes, for example, make us laugh because we didn’t expect the punch line.  When the UPS delivery man comes with an unexpected package containing a gift from someone, our spirits soar.  When an unexpected severe illness or death occurs to a family member, we find ourselves at a loss and find it difficult to regain our bearings.

The unexpected has great power to affect us.

Easter Sunday—the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead—is one of God’s most unexpected surprises, one that threw Jesus’ disciples for a loop.  Yes, they believed that Jesus’ was the Son of God, having become a human being, sharing in their joys and sorrows, and teaching them of God’s love, forgiveness, and mercy.  Yes, they had witnessed Good Friday, the unexpected and cruel death of Jesus at the hands of those who had proclaimed him “King” just seven days earlier. Yes, they knew Jesus had been buried in the tomb.  The disciples were very well-prepared to “see what they know.”

But, even though Jesus had forewarned his disciples of what God had in store for them, his Resurrection from the dead was completely unexpected.  And, when the Risen Lord appeared to his disciples, they didn’t know what they saw.  Their inability to enter into the Resurrection and to allow the Risen Lord to reveal to them who he truly was indicates that what Jesus’ disciples knew very little, if anything at all, about God.

How could this be?

The disciples were incapable of knowing what they saw.  They feared allowing themselves to venture beyond what they knew and to enter into the mystery of God’s power to turn the effects of sin—the greatest of these being death—in new life.  They knew the power of death.  They knew nothing of God’s power to “turn mud into diamonds.”  In short, the disciples were incapable of knowing what they saw when they beheld the Risen Lord.

All of us have experienced failure in our lives.  Looking back upon those experiences, perhaps we find ourselves ashamed, wondering “How could I have done that?”  It is also not unusual that, by entering into that failure and contemplating it a bit, we can also recognize that good oftentimes has come out of our failure.  We may have learned something new about ourselves, turned a corner that we needed to turn, or found an unexpected blessing emerge from a terrible mistake.  It may be that illness or disability led us to discover an unexpected new strength.  It may have led us to turn away from seeking our happiness in things that possess little value or to become more serious about our relationship with God.  Or, perhaps more unexpectedly, it may be that we forgave someone who wronged us.

When it comes to our dealings with God, Easter Sunday reminds us not to see what we know by interpreting what is before us from “without.”  Instead, the events of this day remind us know what we by interpreting what is before us from “within” as we expect the unexpected and remain vigilant for those surprises which include our sorrow being transformed into joy, our suffering being transformed into triumph, our emptiness into fulfillment, and our death into eternal life.

Pope Benedict XVI has described this ideal in “The Nature of Jesus’ Resurrection and Its Historical Significance” in Jesus of Nazareth Part 2: Holy Week—From the Entrance Into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (Ignatius Press, 2011).  The Pope writes:

Jesus did not simply return to normal biological life as one who, by the laws of biology, would eventually have to die again….Jesus is not a ghost (“spirit”). In other words, he does not belong to the realm of the dead but is somehow able to reveal himself in the realm of the living….[The resurrection] is a historical event that nevertheless bursts open the dimensions of history and transcends it… something akin to a radical “evolutionary leap,” in which a new dimension of life emerges, a new dimension of human existence. (pp. 272-273)
 

“Is not this the truly divine way?” the Pope asks.  “Not to overwhelm with external power, but to give freedom, to offer and elicit love.  And if we really think about it, is it not what seems so small that is truly great?” (p. 276).

 

 

 

How your family might celebrate the Easter Season:

Easter is so important that it cannot be celebrated in just one, single day.  To celebrate Easter appropriately, the Church takes fifty days (forty days leading to the Ascension and ten days leading to Pentecost Sunday, fifty days that culminate on what used to be called "Quinquagesimea Sunday").  These are the days that constitute the entire "Easter Season."

Here are four simple ways you might celebrate the entire Easter Season with your family:

    1.   Place a white pillar candle in the center of your kitchen table.  Each night before dinner, assign a member of your family to light the candle and to recall what a person said or did that day to reveal the Risen Lord.  As part of the blessing prayer, give thanks to the Lord for the gift of that person.

    2.  Take a daily walk around the neighborhood.  Identify one sign of new life each day.  After completing the walk, sit down together as a family in the living room or family room and relate each sign to the new life that God has given all of us in the resurrection of His only begotten Son.

    3.   Invite an estranged family member, relative, or friend (or a family member, relative, or friend who hasn't been to visit for a while) to dinner each of the Sundays of the Easter season.  Before the prayer of blessing over the food, read a resurrection appearance where Jesus says to his disciples, "Peace be with you."  Following the blessing of the food, offer one another the sign of peace before partaking of the meal.

    4.   In preparation for the Solemnity of Pentecost, have each member of the family on Easter Sunday write down on a piece of paper a gift of the Holy Spirit that he or she needs in order to become a more faithful disciple.  Fold and place these pieces of paper in a bowl in the center of the kitchen table.  At dinner each evening, pray the "Prayer of the Holy Spirit" to send for these gifts upon the members of the family so that your family will become a light to the world.  Then, before the prayer of blessing over the dinner on Pentecost Sunday, burn the pieces of paper to call to mind that the gifts have already been given in the Sacrament of Confirmation.  The challenge is now to live out those gifts in the ordinary time of our daily lives.

 

Easter is an event that happens each and every day.  During the fifty days of the Easter season, in particular, you and your family can prepare to make Easter happen each and every day of your lives by "practicing" these simple exercises which connect Jesus' risen life to yours as well.

 

 

 

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