In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
My dearly beloved in Our Lord,
“This is the day that the Lord has made – Haec dies, quam fecit Dominus. (Ps 117)”, Holy Mother Church is chanting throughout the Easter Feast and Octave.
How glad are we, true Catholics, to know that Christ has indeed risen from the dead. We know it not only because during all the Christian centuries the empty tomb not far from Calvary has been venerated – until its destruction by the Muslim around the year 1000, which triggered the Crusades. We know it by the surest and the most solid knowledge which has been given to mankind: that of divine revelation. If our intelligence receives God’s revelation and accepts it willingly, then we have and practice Faith.
When modernists go on about the Resurrection, at the end you still do not know for sure whether they believe in a physical Resurrection, or only in “our experience with Jesus living on in our minds”. Let a horse kick them – will they get up and doubt whether they really, physically hace received a blow? If they are logical with themselves, they will!
How glad are we, true Catholics, then, to reject such outrageous doubt or skepticism. Were our hearts not pierced when we heard, in the Passion according to St John, how Pontius Pilate dismissed Our Lord's solemn proclamation of his true kingship and divine mission by the futile words: “Quid est veritas? - What is the truth?” Here the one who is the Truth, God incarnate, was standing before him, talking to him – and then that...! When God speaks, man must listen and believe.
Certainly the presence of the risen Lord is somewhat “ethereal”. He is present although the doors are locked and bolted; then he disappears just as abruptly. He joins the two disciples on their way to Emmaus, on the evening of Easter day; and then he vanishes as soon as they recognize him. But this in no way means that Our Lord only “exists in the disciples' minds”, but it is sufficiently explained through the precise condition of his resurrection body, which is real, but spiritual.
The Fathers of the Church, in their comments, make a clear connection between those different episodes after the Resurrection, and the disciples' faith or charity. Christ himself tells off the Apostles or the disciples because of their lack of faith, or because they are so slow to believe, in spite of the irrefutable proofs of his Resurrection.
The Apostles came back to Faith, Hope and Charity slowly during these days. In this they are an example, but a bad one, for us. On the other side we see Mary Magdalen whose ardent love for Our Lord earns her the grace to be the first one to see Christ at the tomb where she had persevered. She is “the Apostle of the Apostles”, and the Church on her feast day says the Creed at Mass!
Our Lady had not hesitated to “hope against all hope”; she alone had kept faith in her Son: she knew he would die, and she wanted him to die for our Redemption, in accordance with the will of God. But even while holding his dead body on her knees and contemplating the consequences of sin in the terrible wounds of his Passion, her faith never failed, not even for one instant. She did not go to the tomb, on the first day of the week, with the pious women who wanted to anoint the body of Jesus because she knew that he would rise from the dead – that he had risen indeed.
How glad are we true Catholics to be able to call such a mother our own: “Regina caeli laetare, alleluja...” God has delivered up his Son to death on the Cross, in order to redeem us, the slaves of sin, as we have sung in the Exsultet.
So let us adore the profound wisdom of God, His marvelous plan of Redemption which He has conceived and executed in such a perfect way. Let us rejoice during this great Octave with a true spiritual joy and exultation, in order to get rid of the old leaven (Epistle), and in order to seek that which is above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of the Father (Ep., Holy Saturday). Christ is risen indeed, and he is now always with us (cf. Introit) – let us also be with him, let us be true to him.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
P. Arnold Trauner (paterarnold@hotmail.com), njemački i engleski.
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