+HE SAW AND BELIEVED Dawn Mass for Guests on Easter 2017
This weekend with the celebration of the death and resurrection of Christ is right at the heart of our Christian lives. There is something wonderfully simple about it and yet it challenges us to the core of our being as believers. It is the story of the end of one person’s life but a story that awakens in us all a new awareness of what our lives really mean. We are destined with Christ to share in his eternal glory and we let ourselves be drawn into this mystery as we live by a faith calling us to the fullness of life.
The gospel this morning presents us with Mary Magdala arriving at the tomb and finding the stone rolled away. Running to tell the disciples Peter and John about what she has found, they made great haste to the tomb where all they see is the burial cloths and the cloth that had covered Jesus’ head, rolled up in a separate place.
Detain in John’s gospel is often packed with meaning. The cloth covering Jesus’ head rolled up in a separate place speaks ever so gently of Jesus risen and his thoughtfulness of others. And then, when John enters the tomb we are told, “he saw and believed.” In this simple scene, through a person’s faith human life took on a whole new meaning for it completely changed his horizons.
Our faith as Christian does just this, it enables us to see all of our human lives in the light of what God has planned for each of us. The struggles of our everyday lives are preparing us for something extraordinary, something far more than seen at first sight. How we live day in and day out makes a world of difference not only for ourselves but for all those with whom we live. As we believe in what Christ has done, believe in the fact that he is the Son of God, we see God’s design for the whole world, calling each one of us to live as a child of God, to recognize a world full of light and love.
God has drawn so near to us, taking on not only our human flesh and blood but all of our own suffering and death so that we are now able to see that nothing of our human condition is untouched by the divine presence. So great is God’s love for us that we can turn to God in our every need and know that we will receive the help we want. No human pain is any longer foreign to the One who has so greatly loved us. God is right in the middle of all our human suffering and struggles today.
As St Paul reminded us, we have died and our life is hidden with Christ in God. Let us then, be assured that as we live in faith and love, we too will appear with him in glory. Our Eucharistic celebration nourishes us as often as we partake of it, for more life in Him. Amen