Monday, April 25, 2011

Monday in the Octave of Easter

Acts 2:14.22-33; Matthew 28:8-15)

The behavior of the chief priests in the gospel of Matthew might make a saint anti-clerical. They pay to arrange the arrest of an innocent man. They seek false testimony to condemn Jesus. They show no compassion for Judas as struggles with a guilty conscious and less for Jesus on the cross as they ridicule him. After Jesus’ death, they ask Pilate for a guard to prevent the abduction of Jesus’ bodies. And, in today’s gospel, we see them bribing the same guard to lie about what took place. Because the veracity of these incidents cannot be confirmed, it may be best to attribute them to the animosity between the Jews and the Christians when Matthew wrote.

The last two assertions here about the chief priests point to one of the reasons Christians give for belief in the resurrection. His tomb, which is marked in a definite place by all four gospel accounts, was found to be empty that Sunday morning, again in all gospel narratives. Unless the body was stolen as the Jews in Matthew’s account allege, there is no other explanation for its disappearance than the resurrection.

However, our faith in the resurrection is based on more than circumstantial evidence. Jesus also appeared to many people after his body was found missing from the tomb. Today’s gospel speaks of the first appearance to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. St. Paul will give us a list of his appearances: Peter, the Twelve, five hundred Christian brothers, and, of course, to Paul himself. Based on their testimony, the empty tomb, and our own experience of the power of Christ acting in our lives, we do not hesitate to affirm that, yes, he rose from the dead to save us from sin and death.