A Love Stronger than Death

On Wednesday of this past week, I went over to our parish school to visit the religion class of our older students. I like to do that every so often as a way of interacting with them a bit more than I do during our weekly school Mass. I answered a few questions that they had left for me in their Questions for Father box; they wanted to know, among other things, what I like to watch on TV, what my favorite song is, and whether I preferred McDonald’s or Taco Bell. You know, the important stuff.

But really, my primary purpose in making a visit to their classroom was to ask them what they knew about Easter and about the events that led up to it that we as a Church have been celebrating for the last three days, a period we call the Sacred Triduum. We talked about how Jesus ate a final meal with his friends, a meal in which he washed their feet as a sign of his love and a commandment for them to follow. We talked about how he was betrayed by one of his friends, and was arrested, tried, and condemned to death. We talked about he took up a Cross, a terrible instrument of torture that he made into a sign of love and salvation. And we talked about how he was crucified on that Cross, died, and was laid in a tomb.

I asked the school kids: “Is that the end of the story?” And of course, they all earnestly replied, “NO!” And they’re right – it wasn't the end of that story. But while we know that, when those events were actually happening, that wasn’t apparent at all. We may experience the sorrow of Good Friday, but we also feel the tinge of joy that Easter Sunday is coming. But that wasn’t the case for Jesus’s disciples. Maybe they had a vague wisp of belief in something more to come – remembering the Lord’s promises, believing in God’s justice, hoping for the possibility to somehow be reconciled with him who many of them had denied and abandoned. But even if there was some glimmer of these things deep in their hearts, mostly there was just pain and confusion and grief and loss.

But there was also love. As this Gospel tells us, the women from Galilee who were his disciples, who had known him and supported him from the beginning of his ministry – they still had love for Jesus. He was dead and buried now, a big stone keeping him in and everyone else out; but no matter, they still loved him. It could only have been love that made them go out to the tomb that morning at daybreak – despite the danger of doing so, despite the terrifying events of the prior days, despite the seemingly definitive ending that is death – they went to show love to the dead body of their friend and Lord. And what did they find there? Not a dead body but an empty tomb, the huge stone rolled away. And they heard in the words of these two angelic men that Jesus had been raised from the dead.

Federico de Madrazo, The Three Marys at the Tomb (1841)

We are familiar with all of this. We know the basic details of the Easter story, at least as well the children of our school do. But what this simple, strange Gospel story invites us to consider is: do we know it as well as those women of Galilee? Has the message of Easter been made *real* for us? On that morning, those women found their love rewarded – matched by a Love from on high. In that light of dawn, those women of Galilee discovered that the heart of God is also full of love, and had done something they could not. Because the Resurrection of Jesus is not something to be only known about, or even only believed, but it’s something that must be loved. The love of the Risen Jesus is stronger than death.

And so, we must look more deeply into our hearts, to see what is in there that has brought us out on this morning. We knew that this Sunday would follow last Friday; we knew that the Easter season follows upon Lent. But the fact that we know what happened does not mean we really have *understood* it. There’s lots of reasons that can bring us to church on Easter morning: a sense of obligation, a family gathering, a fear that we would miss out. But the best reason to come and celebrate this day is because we can say that what is in our hearts is precisely what those women of Galilee had in theirs – love. Can I say that? Can you?

Friends, the Good News is that, no matter our answer, love is the reason we have come here this morning, because love is the reason that God has for us to be here. Just like he brought those women of Galilee to the empty tomb, to see and believe in the depths of his love, so too he has brought you here today. And he who is Love itself, he who once was dead but who now lives forever, he loves you and he wants to give his love to you, and to make you come to believe in him, just as those women did, with a love stronger than death. He invites you to begin anew this morning, to encounter his love not just at Easter, but every day, especially here in the Mass where he becomes truly Present.

As we prepare for this Eucharist, let us pray that this Sacrament might help our love for the Lord to grow each day, until that day when a love stronger than death will bring us to him in the glory of the Resurrection.