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 B
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 should get a smile on our face when we hear this Gospel of the two disciples running to the tomb and the one outrunning the other. What confusion they had that day. They had seen the burial of their Master and thought Him dead forever. Now they begin to get news, bit by bit, that His body is gone. They don’t yet understand, but they begin to have hope that something really incredible has happened. They begin to reflect on what He had told them.

The reading from the Acts of the Apostles tells us that Jesus was not visible to everyone, but to those who believed. His chosen followers began to be able to understand what had happened by looking at the Prophets and the writing of the Jewish Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament.

On this day of Resurrection we are invited to see Jesus as our risen Lord and to come to understand Him more and more by understanding the Prophets and the writings of the Jewish Scriptures. The more we understand the Old Testament, the more we can understand Jesus and the New Testament.

He is Risen! He is truly Risen! We can understand this when we begin to understand more completely how the Prophet Isaiah was able to see that one person could bear the sins of us all. We can understand more and we read the Psalms and see in them a clear movement in the direction of belief that there is life after this life.

The Letter to the Colossians is clear that we must have a new way of thinking in order to understand Christ. It is not easy to accept so much on faith, yet it is possible if we only put ourselves at the disposal of God.

For the early Christians, the empty tomb became the symbol of life and of belief—that tomb in which the body of Jesus no longer rested in death. Death has now lost all of its meaning. Instead of the end, death becomes the door to new life. We can come to look forward to death. We can speak to those who have gone before us in death.

Today, my sisters and brothers, we celebrate the triumph of life over death, the triumph of light over darkness and the joy of Christ’s rising from the dead for us. Let us rejoice and be glad in Him. Alleluia!