A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Early in the morning, on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb. She saw that the stone had been moved away. So she ran off to Simon Peter and to the other disciple, the one Jesus loved at Saint John, and said to them, the Lord has been taken from the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him. At that, Peter and the other disciple started on their way toward the tomb.
They were running side by side, but then the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He did not enter, but bent down to look into it and saw the wrappings lying on the ground. Presently, Simon Peter came along behind him, and he entered the tomb. Peter observed the wrappings on the ground also and saw the piece of cloth which had covered the head, not lying, however, with the other wrappings, but rolled up in a place all by itself. Then the disciple who had arrived first at the tomb went in.
He saw and believed. Remember, as yet this is very important. Remember, as yet, they did not understand the scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead. This is the gospel gospel of the lord. I hope you paid special attention to that first reading this morning from the acts of the apostles.
I want to just repeat a part of it. Remember, the acts of the apostles was written by Luke, and it was written between '70 and '90. Not before '70 and at the latest '90. Now think of that. That's just lord's execution was in about thirty three AD.
So and remember here, Luke is quoting Peter. Peter is speaking. This is a sermon, and Luke is giving it in the acts of the apostles. So it's Peter speaking to the people, and he's given a a a very brief summary of the entire history of our lord. So then Peter continues.
They killed him finally, only to have god raise him up on the third day and grant that he be seen by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. Taken from the day's reading, the book of the acts of the apostles. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. First of all, of course, I wanna wish you all a very happy Easter.
That, of course, the word happiness. What are we talking? What I wanna wish you is a blessed Easter. And what I mean by blessed there is a renewed faith and confidence that God became man in the womb of a virgin Jewish girl, that God lived, that God suffered and died for us, for me, not a collectivity, he calls us by name. He's the good shepherd.
He died at the hands of his own creatures. He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, and he is our lord, our god, our master. And he speaks in a living voice through his church. That is what I want Easter to mean to you, a renewed conviction that this is the essence of life, of Christian life. Now this business of Christ I wanna bring a little point to your attention, but in in fact, it's not so little.
See, we ordinarily, all of you probably, when you read or when you studied your history, you talked about the the the world, at least in in the Western world before Christ BC, and then in the year of our lord, Anno Domini AD. That's what we're used to. Well, some people don't like that. They don't like Christ coming in there and being the dividing mark of history. So what are they trying to impose upon us now?
The common era, b I mean, c e, common era. So before Christ becomes b c e, and anno domini, the year of our lord, becomes the simply the common era, c e. You'll see that. It's getting you're you're seeing it more and more. Are you going to be swayed by that?
And just notice, even when they eliminate Christ, they cannot eliminate the fact that world history changed radically, fundamentally, profoundly changed when Christ came into this world. It is the world is before Christ, and then it is in the year of our lord, calculated from his birth and his death. Christ came into an unbelieving world. He left this world an unbelieving world, and the world is still unbelieving. It wants no part of Christ.
Now this is the this is the honest god's truth. It isn't that they want to ignore him because that you cannot do. Jesus Christ cannot be ignored. Whether you wanna talk about the common era or the anno domini, the year of our lord, you can't escape it. Christ, you cannot escape.
The only question is what do you make of it? Who was Christ? Now it used to be that we when we talked about Easter and some of the denials of the resurrection, which, of course, in most instances, involve a denial of Jesus Christ as the son of God, we used to be talking about what we call Protestants, Like Von Harnock or Boltmann. No longer. 1987, a philosophy professor from the university the Loyola University in Chicago published a book, 1987, called the first coming of the messiah.
He rejects entirely the idea that Jesus Christ was god. He makes Jesus Christ out to be a disciple of John the Baptist. He didn't found a religion. And all this stuff you know about the resurrection, that's a lot of froth according to our friend. Thomas Sheehan is the man's name, a professor, a tenured professor, the University of Loyola.
In other words, what is Christ? He's a great ethical teacher, or he's the ideal ethical humanist. Well, CS Lewis said it very simply. There's one thing you cannot say about Jesus Christ and that he was only a good man. Because if that's all you can say about him, you can't call him good.
He was either a lunatic or the world's worst and supremest liar. Now there here's a man teaching in a Catholic university. Now in 1966, we had a book called the Passover plot by Hugh Schoenfield, and that gives you all the tired worn out arguments to try to justify the fact, according to them, that Christ never rose from the dead because he wasn't god of call, of course. Now the next person I wanna bring in is not in this category, and that's David Coffey from Australia. Father David Coffey.
He is head of the systematic theology in their most prestigious and old oldest seminary, Saint Patrick's in Australia. Father Coffey, he doesn't deny the divinity of Christ, of course, but he does deny or has denied that there was any physical resurrection. According to him, it's utterly immaterial whether there was an empty tomb or not. The physical part, it doesn't make any difference. He's been stepped on a little bit by Rome.
Notice all of these difficulties which are coming within the church, who picks up the pieces? Rome. Rome. This had been going on for eight years with father Coffey. Now I mentioned this just to bring home to you that the world in which you're I mean, the church in which you are, You have those who do not accept the empty tomb as evidence of the risen lord and savior Jesus Christ.
Your faith is at stake. Don't make any boons about it. You are a minority, not only in the whole world, but almost within the Catholic church today. And so here we are, a little enclave. I call it an oasis, and let us not neglect this.
Don't let us be pessimistic in the least. When Christ rose from the dead, how many people believed in him? How many accepted the resurrection right then and there? The answer is nobody. Nobody.
Not one of the 11. Judas was out of the picture. The Catholic doctrine is and has been for two thousand uninterrupted years. It's in every one of our creeds that Christ died, physically died, was put in a tomb, and left the tomb empty figurative or a metaphor. It's a fact.
Now the first thing is this, what everybody is critical of who takes the time to read the New Testament is that if you've taken the time, you're bound to see it. I spent a couple of days on it, so it's time up to hearing it right now. When you read the accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John, you will find all kinds of discrepancies in the details of the empty tomb. Everybody knows that. Everybody.
So what? I often think, I often think, if you take you take the number of people who saw that great tragedy of when our one of our flights into space exploded, how many thousand people saw that? I saw it in Cartagena. You asked a half a dozen of those people what happened and see the answers you get. Just think of the differences of opinion that you get from eyewitnesses of a simple automobile accident.
Why shouldn't there be discrepancies? The point I wanna make this morning is this, there is no discrepancy about the substance of Christ's resurrection, that he would that he died, that he was buried in a well known tomb. Nobody had ever been laid in it. It belonged to Joseph of Arimathea. Everybody knew where that tomb was.
The women knew where it was because they were going to to prepare the body with what they did in those days. Now there's no doubt about that. And so we have then the empty tomb, and we have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all of them giving us accounts of what happened in the first few hours of the first Easter morning. I wanna bring home two points. The first one is based upon an empty tomb.
This is the focal point. Remember, in Jewish law, the testimony of women was not legal. But when the women went back to Jerusalem, when the when the high priest and the and the lawyers and the authorities of Jerusalem heard about the empty tomb, all they had to do is to go out and look at it. There had the fact of the empty tomb has never been contested by anti Christians. Never once.
Never once. That's my first point. The fact of an empty tomb has gone uncontested. It doesn't rest upon the testimony of the women or the two apostles, Peter and John. The second argument, which transcends the synoptics in Saint John's account is based upon Saint Paul's letter to the Corinthians and the book of the acts of the apostles.
Now listen. Paul was talking to the Corinthians. Notice they're over there in Corinth over in Greece. And what is the year? Fifty seven AD is is a very good date for the first letter of Paul to the '57.
And Christ was executed in about '33. And Paul is talking to Corinthians across the Aegean Sea. And he is talking to them not to prove Christ's resurrection from the dead, not to prove an empty tomb. He is talking to them and arguing on what they already believed. He's appealing to their faith to the doctrine that Christ rose from the dead.
He left an empty tomb. This is this is fifty seven AD. This is not at one of the one of the new one of the gospels. And then the apparitions. The apparitions.
The point is this. Paul had a separate completely separate information about Christ. He says, I did not learn what I know about Christ from anybody except Christ. Paul says that. And when he is writing in those in the to and when he is writing to those Corinthians, he is talking about the risen lord to people who already believe it.
The book of the acts to the apostles, 70 to 90, they are before the gospels. The gospels don't come until a little later. Now this is testimony which is indisputable. Now the second point, the first is the empty tomb, which is an uncontested fact. The second point I wanna make, I'm watching the clock, are the apparitions of our lord.
I just hastily, just very hastily count him. I counted five or six. Now you'll just remember what Peter says in quoted by Saint Luke to in today, that Christ appeared and he ate and he drank with them. Christ appeared to the women and the and the two disciples the first thing on Easter Sunday morning. He appeared to the 10 of them in the upper room in Jerusalem, and Thomas was not there.
So the others told Thomas, we have seen the lord. He has appeared to us. We have seen the the prints of the nails in his hands, and we have seen the slash in his side. We have seen the lord. He has risen.
And what did Thomas say? I don't believe it. I do not believe it. Unless I can put my hands in those nail holes and in his side, I will not believe. So the disciples are in the upper room again.
Now Thomas is with him, and the lord appears through the locked doors. And he asked for food. Have you anything to eat? Ghosts don't eat, Christ said. And then he points out to Thomas.
Thomas, come here. Put your hands in my nail holes. Put your hand in my side. Now do you believe? And all Thomas can say is my lord and my god.
What more can we say? And then you have the story of the apostles on the road to Emma house. Do you have the the story of upon the Sea Of Galilee? The disciples are are they expecting something? Not at all.
They've given up. They're in despair. They're frustrated. They've gone back. They've left Jerusalem.
They've gone back to the north country up to the lake. They've gone back to their fishing, and there they are out on the lake catching nothing. And then they see this a man on the shore who with the arrogance, of course, landlubbers, the man on the shore tells them what to do to catch some fish, and they do it. And their nets are loaded. And the man on the shore tells them to come in.
When they come in, there's a fire burning, there's bread, and there are fish waiting for them to eat. And lo and behold you, they recognize the lord. And then we have the last apparition of our lord just before his resurrection when he ascends into heaven. Now the these these are the things you have to reckon with. This isn't based upon one little text.
This is not based at all upon the upon the four gospels. It's based upon the living tradition of the church, based upon what is certainly firm, firm evidence, evidence. And so today, my dear, I hope you your faith is renewed. Easter is surrounded with a lot of drama. Don't let us miss the boat.
Let us put ourselves in the place of Thomas. Let us bow down and say, my lord and my god. In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.