Sunday Meditation: Easter Sunday, The Women at the Tomb

The day of Resurrection is here!  Blessed be God, He has risen!

 

I will post on the Gospel reading for the Easter Vigil Mass. The Gospel is always the same for each of the three years, the discovery of the empty tomb from St. John’s Gospel.  Easter Vigil Mass follows the Lectionary cycle, which for Year C is the empty tomb passage of Luke.

 

At daybreak on the first day of the week

the women who had come from Galilee with Jesus

took the spices they had prepared

and went to the tomb.

They found the stone rolled away from the tomb;

but when they entered,

they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

While they were puzzling over this, behold,

two men in dazzling garments appeared to them.

They were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground.

They said to them,

"Why do you seek the living one among the dead?

He is not here, but he has been raised.

Remember what he said to you while he was still in Galilee,

that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners

and be crucified, and rise on the third day."

And they remembered his words.

Then they returned from the tomb

and announced all these things to the eleven

and to all the others.

The women were Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James;

the others who accompanied them also told this to the apostles,

but their story seemed like nonsense

and they did not believe them.

But Peter got up and ran to the tomb,

bent down, and saw the burial cloths alone;

then he went home amazed at what had happened.

~Lk 24:1-12

 

Fr. Sam French offers us a homily in which faith and reason work toward understanding the resurrection.

The changes and persistence in the apostles and disciples after the Resurrection that something as earth shaking as Jesus rising from the dead is what really convinces me. 

Fr. Timothy Dore OFM Cap of the Companions of St. Anthony provides a pastoral homily.

Alleluia, He is risen!

 

 

Sunday Meditation: "Why do you seek the living one among the dead?  He is not here, but he has been raised."

 

 

Let us rejoice with the Victimae paschali laudes, which you should have heard on Easter Sunday.  I really like this simple rendition in English by Corpus Christi Watershed.

 

 

The choir at our Mass performed it in Latin.  I have posted on it in Latin and analyzed its beauty.  I’m going to capture this English translation attributed in the video to a Father Fortescue.

 

Sing to Christ your paschal victim

Christians sing your Easter hymn

The sinless Lord for sinners

Christ God's son for creatures died

The sheep who stray the Lamb of God redeemed

Then death and life their battle

Wonderfully fought and now

The King of life once dead forever lives

Tell us Mary we pray

What you saw on Easter day

Empty was the grave and looking

I saw there the glory of his rising

The angel witnesses I saw and folded linen

Christ my hope is risen truly in Galilee

He goes before you

We know he rose from death indeed

And so to him we pray

Great king and Lord of life

Bless us this day

Amen

Hallelujah

Have a blessed Easter!

Sunday Meditation: The Empty Tomb

 

I love the opening line of Resurrection Sunday from the Gospel of John.

 

“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.”

       -John 20:1

 

So simple and so powerful.

Letters of St. Catherine of Siena: Catherine Extols Mary Magdalene

I recently acquired new three of the four volumes of Suzanne Nofke’s wonderfully edited The Letters of Catherine of Siena at the ridiculously low price of $10 each.  These are each 600 hundred page scholarly, hardcovers for research libraries.  They should easily go ten or twelve times that each.  I have Volumes I, III, and IV.  I am missing Volume II.  Oh I would love to complete the set.  Right now Amazon lists available one used copy of Volume II for $250, and it is only in an “acceptable” condition.  I’m holding out for something more affordable, or at least in better condition.  You can read about Sr. Susan Nofke O.P. and her translation of the letters here.  

In honor of today, St. Catherine of Siena’s feast day—and bear in mind, she’s my patron saint—I want to post something from them.  Here’s is a paragraph from the very first letter, identified as “Letter T61/G183/DT2,” dated “Before May 1374” but one scholar dates this as early as 1365 or 1366.  That would make Catherine eighteen or nineteen years old. 

Some context to the letter.  The letter is addressed to Mona Agnesa Malavolti, a widow and a member of one of the leading families of Siena.  She is also a Montellate, which was a group of Dominican tertiaries which Catherine herself was a member.  The letter’s intent is to bring her order into unison with St. Mary Magdalene, who, as one of the first Resurrection preachers of Christ, holds a special place in the Dominican Order. 

Catherine in her letters has a habit of breaking into dialogue with a saint or God, and so the italicized sections of this paragraph are actually addressing the Blessed Virgin or Magdalene herself.

Oh sweet virgin, how well you imitated that devoted disciple Magdalen.  See, dearest daughters, how Magdalen knew herself, and humbled herself.  With what great love she sat at our gentle Savior’s feet.  And speaking of showing him love, we surely see it at the holy cross.  She wasn’t afraid of the Jews, nor did she fear for herself.  No, like a passionate lover she ran and embraced the cross.  Indeed, in order to see her Master she was bathed in blood.  Surely you were drunk with love, oh Magdalen!  As a sign that she was drunk with love for her Master, she showed it in her actions toward his creatures, when after his holy resurrection she preached in the city of Marseille.  And, I tell you, she had the virtue of perseverance.  You showed this, dearest Magdalen, when you were seeking your beloved Master after not finding him in the place where you had laid him.  So, oh Magdalen, love, you were beside yourself; you had no heart, since it was buried with your dearest Master and our dear Savior.  But you took it upon yourself to find your dear Jesus.  You didn’t give up; you didn’t stop grieving.  How commendably you acted!  For you found out by your persevering you were able to find your Master.

Legend has it that Mary Magdalene, after the Gospel accounts, traveled to southern France (Marseille) to preach and convert.  That’s part of why the Dominican order hold her as one of their patronesses. 

In many ways Magdalene is almost a stand in for Catherine herself here.  She seems to be projecting herself into Magdalene’s situation.  It’s Catherine who is always embracing Christ crucified and his blood.  I am also amazed that a eighteen or nineteen year old girl speaks in this manner to someone above her in experience and station.  My dear Catarina was not shy.

Today, April 29^th, is the feast day of St. Catherine of Siena, my patroness.  Pray for us St. Catherine of Siena.

Gospel of John, Part 5

Part 1 on this series on John’s Gospel is here.    

Part 2 is here:   

Part 3 is here.    

Part 4 is here. 

One last post on the Gospel of John, this on the resurrection scenes.  What is marvelous is the physicality of the resurrected Christ.  When He appears to Mary Magdalene and she finally realizes it is Him, she embraces Him.  He has to say, “Stop holding on to me” (John 20:17).  In the Vulgate Latin, it’s “Noli me tangere” or literally “Do not touch me.”  I don’t know which is the more accurate translation, I assume the more modern one, but both emphasize touch.  Well, one doesn’t touch a spirit.  One touches a body. 

And when Jesus appears to Thomas and He has Thomas put his hands into Christ’s wounds, we can sense along with Thomas Christ’s physicality.  Despite Jesus being able to go through walls, He is corporeal.  He is of a special type of flesh.

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Finally I noticed something in chapter 21 that I never noticed before.  After that marvelous scene where Jesus has Peter commit three times his love, and Jesus forecasts Peter’s death, Peter asks about the beloved disciple.

Peter turned and saw the disciple following whom Jesus loved, the one who had also reclined upon his chest during the supper and had said, “Master, who is the one who will betray you?”  When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about him?”  Jesus said to him, “What if I want him to remain until I come? What concern is it of yours? You follow me.”  So the word spread among the brothers that that disciple would not die. But Jesus had not told him that he would not die, just “What if I want him to remain until I come? [What concern is it of yours?]”  (John 21:21-23)

Of course I’ve read that passage many times, but I never noticed that John, who we know as the Beloved Disciple, was following Jesus.  Where is he going?  Does he disappear from the disciples?  We know that John is the only apostle who is not martyred.  We know he forms a community in Asia Minor, and he does disappear from the apostles in Acts.  What is strange is that Jesus asks Peter to metaphorically follow Him but it is John who physically follows Him here.  I don’t have an answer for that.  But it caught my attention.