Happy Easter Sunday to everyone!

Today, all Christianity celebrates the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ separates Christianity from the rest of the religions of the world simply because no other founder of any religion ever made such a claim that they would die and come back to life. Indeed, only someone who came from heaven above can make such a claim and best of all, truly make it happen the way our Lord Jesus Christ did on that glorious first Easter Sunday. Today’s gospel is the Empty Tomb and you can read it in John 20:1-19.

“1 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. 2 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.” 3 So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb.

4 They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first; 5 he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in. 6 When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, 7 and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place. 8 Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed. 9 For they did not yet understand the scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”

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When people tell me that women do not have a major role in Christianity, I always chastise them for their ignorance of the Bible. First of all, there would be no human race if God only made Adam without Eve. That story alone is more than enough proof that women are important in Christianity. That God’s salvific plan included for his only begotten Son to be born of a sinless woman. God could have made the Messiah simply appear in the desert, but he wanted to make sure that Jesus came from the Davidic line, which was prophesied from the time of Moses and to the prophets.

So when the time for the Messiah came to be born, he was born in a lowly cave, and we can all picture the Holy Family huddled together at the Son of God, born of the flesh from a sinless woman. Christmas, as we’ve already written so many times in the past, was the fulfillment of God’s promise to send forth the Messiah who will save us from our sins.

But the greatest fulfillment of God’s salvific plan was for the Messiah to sacrifice himself and die for our sins and on the third day, he would rise again to conquer death and that’s exactly what Easter Sunday is all about. And yes, the first news about the resurrection came from the mouth of a woman, Mary of Magdala. So please don’t forget that women have a major role in God’s salvific plan.

The empty tomb is proof that our Lord Jesus Christ is divine because only a divine person who came from heaven can return to heaven in glory and come back once more to earth as a glorified body. God made it that way because when he created Paradise, man and woman or Adam and Eve already had a glorified body, but alas they fell into sin and lost Paradise.

As St. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith…. We are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead.” That God raised his only begotten Son Jesus from the dead is proof that God holds dominion over life and death. He created life when he created Adam and Eve. He created life when Sarah, the wife of Abraham became pregnant even in her advance age. Thus, creating life has been the life work of God as written in many passages in the Bible.

But in all the stories that you can find in the Bible, there is only one story about the raising of the dead and this only happens when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead to give his disciples a preview of what would happen to him after he is crucified, where God himself raises his only Son in glorious resurrection.

This Easter Sunday, I hope that we Catholics immerse ourselves in the Passion and Death of Jesus in order for us to feel his pain and his suffering, which he does not deserve for he is a man born without sin and doesn’t deserve any punishment for our sins. This is why our Lord said, “There is no greater love than for one to die for a friend.” That Jesus died for us, his resurrection assures us that the truths that he preached during his earthly ministry, especially about the resurrection of the dead, is a reality that we must embrace; that indeed, we are mere pilgrims here on earth and heaven is our ultimate and final goal.

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