Dominica Resurrectionis Domini Nostri Iesu Christi
Chiesa dei Santi Michele e Gaetano
Firenze
9 Aprile 2023
Epistola: 1 Cor. 5, 7-8
Evangelium: Marc. 16, 1-7
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Christ, our Pasch, is immolated, alleluia: therefore, let us feast on the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.[1]
These divinely inspired words of the Communion antiphon, taken from the First Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, express the objective reality which is the source of the inexpressible wonder and joy of today, the day of the Resurrection of Our Lord. It is the reality which the Easter Angel announced to the holy women who had come to the tomb of Christ to anoint his lifeless body and found his tomb empty:
Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him.[2]
Having been cruelly tortured and executed by crucifixion, and having poured out entirely His life blood, when the Roman soldier pierced his Side after He had died, Christ rose from the dead, conquering death for ever in our human nature and winning for us the inheritance of eternal life. From his seat in glory at the right hand of God the Father, Our Lord pours out unceasingly and without measure His life for us. He pours out the all-sufficient grace – sanctifying and actual – of the Holy Spirit from His glorious-pierced Heart into our hearts. So it is that we, alive in Christ through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, are destined to enjoy eternal life. At our death, our souls are destined to rest eternally in God. Our bodies, once placed in the tomb, are destined, on the Last Day, to rise to life everlasting in the same glory of Our Risen Lord. He is indeed, in the words of Saint Paul, “the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.”[3]
Dom Prosper Guéranger thus comments on the words of the Easter Angel to the holy women, recorded in today’s Gospel:
He is risen: He is not here!
The Corpse, laid by the hands of them that loved their Lord, on the slab that lies in that cave, is risen; and, without removing the stone that closed the entrance, has gone forth, quickened with a life which can never die. No man has helped him. No prophet has stood over the dead Body, bidding it return to life. It is Jesus himself, and by his own power, that has risen. He suffered death, not from necessity, but because he so willed; and again, because he willed, he has delivered himself from its bondage. O Jesus! Thou, that thus mockest death, art the Lord our God![4]
It is Christ’s glorious, unbloody Body – His glorious Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity – , the fruit of His bloody Sacrifice on Calvary, which we receive in Holy Communion, both as Heavenly Bread to sustain us on our earthly pilgrimage and as the sure pledge of the destiny of our pilgrimage: eternal life. Thus, we pray before the Most Blessed Sacrament, in the words of Saint Thomas Aquinas: “O sacred banquet, in which Christ is received, the memory of his Passion is renewed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us.”[5]
The reality we celebrate today changes our lives forever. We live now in the presence of the Risen Christ, sharing in the very gift of His life which is eternal life. We receive from Him, as long as we faithfully remain in His company, the grace to live each moment of life in anticipation of its fulfillment in the Kingdom of Heaven. The living Word of Our Lord defines the extraordinary nature of our ordinary daily life: “Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the marriage feast, so that they may open to him at once when he comes and knocks.”[6] So I will pray at the Secret: “We beseech Thee, O Lord, accept the prayers of Thy people together with the Sacrifice they offer, that what has been begun by the Paschal Mysteries, may by Thy arrangement result in our eternal healing.”[7] Dom Guéranger comments on the Secret:
The whole assembly of the faithful is about to partake of the Paschal banquet; the divine Lamb invites them to it…. The holy Church, in her Secret, invokes upon these favoured guests the graces which will procure for them the blissful immortality whereof they are about to receive a pledge.[8]
May our every thought and word and deed reflect the objective reality of our life in Christ. May every aspect of our daily living be a cooperation with divine grace for the glory of God, for our own salvation, and for the salvation of the world.
Let us pray today for our holy Mother Church who is attacked by those, especially from within the Church, who, in rebellion, separate their will from the will of God and thus fall into so much confusion and error with their deadly fruits: division, heresy, apostasy, and schism. Let us pray for renewed knowledge and love of Sacred Tradition, of Christ Who alone is our salvation and who alone, in an unbroken line from the time of the Apostles, teaches us divine truth, animates us with divine love, and gives us the grace of obedience to the will of God and, thus, of eternal salvation.
Let us also pray for the peoples of the world who suffer violence and death because of the injustice which is the fruit of lies, corruption, and hatred, especially in the Ukraine but also in many other nations and communities and families. Let us pray that the grace which flows unceasingly and immeasurably from the pierced Heart of Our Risen Lord may reach their hearts to heal them and may reach the hearts of all to restore the order of justice with its fruit which is harmony and peace.
One with the Immaculate Heart of Mary and under the fatherly protection of the Purest Heart of Saint Joseph, let us now place our hearts completely into the glorious-pierced Heart of Jesus, as He makes sacramentally present for us His Sacrifice on Calvary. May our hearts, purified of all sin and animated with divine love in the Sacred Heart of Jesus, be one with the hearts of all our brothers and sisters, especially our brothers and sisters who are in most need.
Christ, our Pasch, is immolated, alleluia: therefore, let us feast on the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.[9]
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke