First Reading
Acts of the Apostles 10:34a, 37-43
Peter proceeded to speak and said: “You know what has happened all over Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power. He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree. 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. He commissioned us to preach to the people and testify that he is the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness, that everyone who believes in him will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.
Second Reading
Colossians 3:1-4
Brothers and sisters: If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.
Gospel Cycle Cycle C
John 20:1-9
On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.” So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first; he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in. When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place. Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed. For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.
Christ is risen! We, like the early followers of the Lord Jesus, do not yet understand the Scripture that He had to rise from the dead. Even today, some two thousand years after the birth of our Lord, we still find it difficult to believe that He rose from the dead and that He is God and that He has saved us. Far too often we live as if Jesus were only a sort of good and moral leader who keeps urging us to be good.
The first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles, tells us that God raised Jesus from the dead on the third day and has given us the forgiveness of our sins if we believe in Him. That is so difficult to believe at so many levels of our lives, and yet if we do believe that our sins are forgiven, our lives are changed forever. We can begin to think of what is above—not spatially because we don’t think that way any more, but in terms of what lies ahead of us and beyond us at this present time.
Today’s Gospel shows this amusing accoung of Simon Peter and the other disciple running to the tomb. When the other disciple gets there, he looks in but does not go in. Instead he waits for Simon Peter to go in first. The other disciple gives his own testimony: he saw and he believed.
As we begin to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus this year, let us remember the words: saw and believed. We are called to look at our world and at our Church—and believe that God is present. We are called to see and believe that God is in all peoples and in those who are around us. Seeing and believing. Why? Because Christ has risen from the dead and invites us to share His divine life. Why? Because God has loved us even from the womb and before all time.
Let us rejoice and be glad. Christ is risen. Alleluia.