The Tomb is Empty, Alleluia!!

I remember in November of 2007, I was leading a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and one of our last stops in Jerusalem was to The Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It was interesting to witness the interchange between the Eastern and Western Churches in their desire to claim parts of this holy site of Christ’s Death and Resurrection. This is mostly a cordial exchange, but literally there are certain lines that you are not allowed to cross! This interesting dialogue about what part of Holy Sepulcher belongs to which group, can be a bit unsettling to the naïve pilgrim, until one recalls the important reality of the empty tomb. This desire to claim a part of the physical place of Christ’s Resurrection, made me reflect upon how we as Christians claim the Resurrection for ourselves.

By the Resurrection, Christ has defeated death and now we are offered the gift of eternal life. But what is eternal life? The Gospel of John 17:3 states, “Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.” This knowledge is not merely a speculative or esoteric knowledge, but an intimate knowledge of the Love of the Father and the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. By our very nature we are made for this love and nothing less! Unfortunately, in our need to quell our own fears and insecurities we seek to satisfy this need for love with mediocrity and enter into sin. The Lenten Season gave us the opportunity to let go of the mediocrity of sin and enter the love of God. However, do we believe that we are worthy of God’s love?

God’s love is not some idealistic sentimental reality, but a compassionate one where Christ wants to enter our lives and love us through our brokenness. However, because of our pride, we have a false notion of Christian perfection and love. We convince ourselves that Christ’s love is some ideal to be achieved rather than a gift to be received and we beat ourselves up when we do not meet our ideal of perfection. We only claim the Resurrection authentically and receive intimacy with Christ when we humbly recognize and surrender our fears, pride, false passions and sin to Christ and let him fill that void intimately with himself and his love!

There is no desire or passion that Christ cannot satisfy in and through his love, therefore, we must have the courage to give him every part of our being, the good, bad, and ugly! When we surrender to Christ all of what we are, he pours out all of what he is and we are perfected by this gift of divine justice (THE EUCHARIST). May we have the courage this Easter Season, to abandon our tombs of self-justification and be perfected in Christ’s love.

Easter Blessings,

Father Craig Smith
Parochial Vicar St. Mary Catholic Church