Empty Tomb (Easter Sunday ABC)

On the 26th of February, year 2010, the last Jesuit missionary who left the Prelature of Ipil (in the Province of Zamboanga Sibugay) after serving for 43 years in building up the Christian communities, passed away. Fr. Angel Antonio, SJ, was well loved by the people he had served because of his simplicity, self-giving, and his gentle and loving manner of shepherding the flock. He died in his new assignment as spiritual director and confessor at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Cagayan de Oro City. On his death, the people of the Prelature of Ipil expressed their ardent desire to have the remains of Fr. Angel buried in Ipil as he had been their pastor practically the whole of his life... 43 years! However, to their dismay, the decision to have his burial in Cagayan de Oro City prevailed.

At the funeral mass, the words of Archbishop Ledesma moved many of the people from Ipil almost to tears. He said something to this effect: “The people of the Prelature of Ipil loved Fr. Angel so much that they wanted him to be buried there. Since it is not going to happen, it will not be a surprise if the people of the Prelature of Ipil put up an empty tomb for their beloved pastor.”

An empty tomb for a beloved pastor! The idea moved me to tears of joy having in the back of my mind its hopeful Easter connotations. The empty tomb, once created, will be a powerful reminder to the people that their pastor lives. He continues to live in their hearts; he lives in the love of God.

In the eyes of Easter faith, the empty tomb brings home the message that death has not the last word. Life triumphs! The eyes of Easter faith see so much meaning in the emptiness of a grave because of two kinds of vision: The vision of love and the vision of hope.

The Vision of Love. The gospel reading (Jn 20:1-9) this Easter Sunday recounts how the disciples discovered the empty tomb. Mary Magdalene first sees the stone already removed from the tomb. Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved come next to witness after having been informed by her. While they share the same experience, the gospel writer highlights the fact that it is the beloved disciple who comes to believe: “He saw and believed” (v. 8). While the others do not understand as yet the meaning of the empty tomb, the beloved disciple, who has had a strong bond of love with the Lord, sees through the emptiness the truth that the beloved Master is alive. His heart is sensitized by the experience of Jesus’ love to grasp quite easily through the sign of the empty tomb the Easter truth that the beloved Master lives.

Love begets faith. Hence, I would like to believe that the depth of the joy of our Easter celebration depends so much on the quality of love we have shared with the Lord and with one another. A heart that has grown fonder to the Lord each day is one that will certainly rejoice in the proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection. The flock who shared among themselves and with their pastor so many years of loving will certainly see through the sign of the empty tomb that their pastor, Fr. Angel, lives.

The Vision of Hope. There is more to the empty tomb than just an historical or archaeological import. The empty tomb is a theological illumination of the anxious groping in the darkness of Good Friday which is disturbingly expressed by the dying Messiah himself: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” Good Friday, with its impenetrable darkness, easily leads to despair. The empty tomb of Easter, however, opens up the eyes of hope and dispels the defeatist summon to despair. The empty tomb reveals that God does not abandon whom he loves even at times when he is frighteningly silent. It turns Easter into a season of hope, a season that heightens our awareness of God’s presence in spite of the evidence of his absence.

How many terrible stories of suffering and brokenness I’ve heard in my ministry! Oftentimes, I wonder how people manage to move on given the miserable and hapless situations they are in. But they do move on even if their unsettling questions remained unanswered, their burdens not lifted. It is in these people that I actually encounter existential hope. They are the Easter people who, while struggling in life, have seen the empty tomb as a guarantee that suffering and death have been vanquished; everlasting joy and life triumph. The Messiah lives and is victorious!

This season of Easter then is an invitation to cultivate love, to make our hearts sensitive to the presence of the Risen Lord among us. It is a summons too to see beyond our suffering and move on in life with hope.

Through the Eyes of Mary (Easter Sunday ABC)

One beautiful expression of popular piety on Easter Sunday is the holding of the Encuentro.  It is held at early dawn to commemorate the meeting between Mary and her risen Son.  The image of Mary veiled in black symbolizing her sorrow is accompanied by the procession of women while the image of the Risen Christ is accompanied by men.  The meeting of the images is then dramatized to portray the joy that dispels the sorrow of Mary as she meets her risen son.  

This joyous encounter is not mentioned in the Gospels.  But for St. Ignatius of Loyola the meeting between Mary and the Risen Lord is considered to be common sense.   In his book, The Spiritual Exercises, one of the contemplations on the Resurrection deals with what for him would have been Jesus' very first appearance after rising from the dead.  Common sense tells us that such an appearance would have been to his Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary who had been actively present in all of his life, from womb to tomb. Indeed, this might be the reason why Mary’s name is not mentioned in the list of women who went to the tomb on Easter dawn.  Mary had no need of visiting the tomb, for Jesus had appeared to her.

Easter joy through the eyes of Mary. During my 30-day Ignatian retreat, I did this contemplation and realized that the best way to experience the joy of Easter is to see the mystery of the resurrection through the eyes of Mary.  If there was one person who suffered most the excruciating pain of watching Jesus being humiliated and violently slaughtered on the cross,  it was certainly no other than his mother, Mary.  It is not difficult to see Mary’s heart to have been torn into pieces as she witnessed the passion and death of her son.  The darkness of Good Friday was most oppressive to Mary as a mother who watched his son died violently. Yet Mary had always been a woman of faith.  She had always kept everything about Jesus in her heart and pondered on them.  She had always believed that what was spoken to her by the Lord would be fulfilled. Hence, while reeling from her deepest sorrow for Jesus’ death, Mary had been strengthened by hope and anticipation.  On Easter dawn, the sorrow of Mary turned into rejoicing and joy.  Any mother can empathize with this indescribable joy of embracing once again a son who had victoriously overcome death with a glorious eternal life.

In my own contemplation of the meeting between Mary and the Risen Lord, I shed a river of tears--tears of tremendous joy—and sang along with the rejoicing Mother: “Ang puso ko’y nagpupuri, nagpupuri sa Panginoon. Nagagalak ang aking espiritu sa ‘king tagapagligtas!” Indeed, as the psalmist chants, today we all rejoice, “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad” (Ps 118). Alleluia!

As we participate in the Encuentro, we are invited to experience the joy of Easter through the eyes of Mary. Pray for the gift of that joy.  Unlike any fleeting ecstatic emotion, this gift of joy stays in our heart as disposition and shapes the way we live as followers of the Risen Christ.  This joy is to be our character as Easter people.  But how do we nurture this precious Easter gift of joy? Let me suggest three ways:

First, Sunday Renewal.  The Lord’s Day, the day of his resurrection, is our day of gathering as an Easter community.  Let this weekly anniversary enkindle the joy in our hearts as we celebrate the Eucharist. We are a community of witnesses.  According to Peter in our first reading (Acts 10: 34a, 37-43): “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.” The Eucharist is a privilege event for us whom God has invited to be witnesses of the living Lord. We encounter the risen Lord as a community when we break bread in his memory.

Second, Heralding Forgiveness.  We are called not just to the joyful fellowship among us but also to reach out to those whose lives have been deprived of joy.  There’s just so much suffering around us because of sin and its unfortunate consequences.  Only forgiveness in the name of the risen Lord can overcome the power of sin.  Peter continued to speak in our first reading about our commissioning to testify about Jesus Christ. We are to be heralds of forgiveness in the name of Jesus. And experience tells us that one of our deepest joys is the experience of being forgiven and of having forgiven. Forgiveness sets us free from the chain of sin. Such is an Easter event.

Third, Cultivating Humor.  A sign of resurrection faith is humor.  Humor rests on the confidence that even if things do not seem to go well, everything will be alright. We do not have to control everything in life.  As Richard Gula puts it, “…humor is about perceiving discrepancies and incongruities in daily life, about embracing absurdities in human experience without granting them the last word. Humor enables us to let go of control and to sit more lightly on life by not taking ourselves too seriously.”  Our gift of Easter joy can be nurtured as we cultivate our sense humor, as we develop our capacity to laugh at our imperfections and even at our miseries for we know they do not define our destiny.

Mary of Magdala, Peter, and John saw the empty tomb of Jesus on Easter morning.  Later and gradually, they would understand its meaning.  The tomb is empty because the Lord lives! The risen Lord will soon appear to the disciples. On that Sunday morning though, the beloved Son had to console his sorrowing mother who had always been there for him. If we could only witness such a moving encounter, we would have a real taste of the tremendous and indescribable joy of Easter.