Christ Has Risen
by the Rev. Francis T. Gignac, S.J.
April 4, 1999

Early Christians had a faith experience of Jesus being still alive after his death on the cross. Over the course of a generation or more, they developed different ways of articulating this experience for themselves and others. Three of these ways are found in this Sunday’s readings.

The first reading (Acts 10:34,37-43) reflects a pre-gospel formulation of Christian preaching. The author of this work attributes a speech to Peter, the first witness of the resurrection in his account. He presents a gospel in miniature: how God anointed Jesus at his baptism with his Spirit as the agent of salvation, how Jesus went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil; and how finally Jesus was crucified, then raised by God to new life.

Peter concludes by saying that those who had a personal faith experience of the risen Lord were commissioned to preach reconciliation and forgiveness to all who believe in him. This passage was written to encourage other Christians — and therefore us down through the ages — also to experience our risen Lord in faith, to feel his saving power, to develop a personal relationship with him, and to carry his message of hope and salvation to our society today.

The reading ends with a statement that all the prophets testify to him. Of course, on a literal level the prophets in the Hebrew Bible spoke only about their own times and expressed their hopes and dreams of a coming messianic age only in the vaguest terms. But when we as Christians read the Hebrew Bible, we see a deeper meaning in the words of the writers and prophets than they were ever conscious of.

When we celebrate our Easter at the first full moon of spring at the same time as our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate their Passover, we commemorate the same great events of our mutual salvation history. As Christians, we add our belief in a redemption from sin and spiritual death accomplished through Jesus of Nazareth; and we add the dimension of a personal relationship with one who died and was exalted to glory, as we all hope to be.

In the second reading (1 Cor 5:6-8), where Paul tells the Christian believers in Corinth to get rid of all old yeast, as a Jewish household gets rid of anything containing yeast on the eve of Passover, in order to make a new start, because Christ our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed. The time has passed for corruption and wickedness; the time has come for sincerity and truth in our relationship with our risen and living Lord.

The gospel passage (John 20:1-9) is one of six different accounts of the resurrection in the New Testament. Each account was written to meet the needs of a particular church and the stories are told to illustrate the individual author’s themes and theological views. A key to Peter’s importance in tradition is that in most of these accounts he was the first to see the risen Jesus.

But the fourth gospel describes Simon Peter and the Beloved Disciple (a literary figure for the Christian believer) going to the empty tomb but not seeing Jesus. It is to a woman, Mary of Magdala, that Jesus first appears, instructing her to go and tell his brothers of his glorification. Mary of Magdala is pictured as being commissioned by the Lord himself, and what she proclaims to the other disciples is the standard apostolic announcement of the resurrection in the New Testament: "I have seen the Lord." She is presented as an apostle to the apostles.

Two criteria are listed in New Testament literature for an apostle: being a witness to the risen Lord and preaching Christ to others. In this last gospel, the prototype of an apostle is a woman, and the first witness of the resurrection is a woman. Mary of Magdala is also presented here as a representative of the only disciples who did not desert Jesus but remained faithful to him to the very end — his women disciples.

The Easter liturgy calls all of us to experience our risen Lord in faith, to develop a personal relationship with him, and to bring the reality of our faith to a higher level of awareness. We are also called to witness our faith experience of our risen Lord to others, to proclaim by our words and by the example of our lives that we realize that our sinfulness is forgiven and that our spiritual death has been destroyed by his resurrection.

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