No one saw the resurrection. What Mary of Magdala and Peter and John saw in our Gospel today was an empty tomb. We so want more proof than an empty tomb. In our humanness, we want to cling to the historical body of Jesus instead of embracing the risen body of Christ. The women and apostles were no different. “They have taken the Lord from the tomb,” Mary tells Peter and John, “and we don’t know where they put him.” They did not understand what the empty tomb meant for a while. In the coming weeks, we will hear about the additional manifestations of Jesus the risen Christ that led Thomas, Peter and the other “witnesses” to believe. What they came to believe, to see with faith and not with their eyes, is that the risen Lord lives within all creation and within us. Or rather we live “en Kristo,” in Christ, a phrase St. Paul uses more than 100 times in his writings. What is the risen Christ we live united with? Pope Francis says “…it is the victory of love over the root of evil, a victory that does not ‘by-pass’ suffering and death, but passes through them, opening a path in the abyss, transforming evil into good: this is the unique hallmark of the power of God” (Pp Francis, Easter message, 2020). When we see that victory of love in ourselves and in our world, we are seeing the risen Christ. That is our proof. Look for that today!
— Blog entry by Sister Mary Garascia