It must have been very, very difficult for those who knew and loved Christ to live out Friday and Saturday in any kind of spirit of aliveness for if anything seemed definitive it certainly looked as if the death of Christ ended everything. And it must have been on the minds of many others because after all just the previous Sunday, Jesus was heralded in coming into Jerusalem itself. And he preached all week and crowds came to his preaching. All of a sudden he receives the most horrendous crucifixion and death. Since this was the Sabbath day most of his followers are Jewish and so they keep the Sabbath and so they= re very silent and reflective. Maybe others as well. So at day break the women that followed Jesus in Galilee, Luke tells us, and he also mentions other things later so there must have been more than just those, and we know that Mary Magdalene also very early went to the tomb maybe she was with this group, they had a concern that Jesus wasn= t properly buried according to their custom, with spices and make sure the tomb was tided up. I don= t know what they were thinking but they were able to remove the stone. The stone was a kind of image of how their hearts were crushed. That death was in fact definitive and life could possibly have no more meaning.

So if they had it their way they would have some how removed the stone, cleaned up the tomb, put in the spices, put the stone back and said, A that= s it!@ But their plan was not God= s plan. Something totally different happened. Instead they found the tomb opened, the body gone, and angles speaking to them proclaiming the Easter message: A Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here he is risen!@ A Don= t you remember what he said that he must be placed with the wicked, scourged, and on the third day he would rise.@

So they ran to the apostles and found that they were not accepted. That the apostles were too heavy hearted and could not let in the truth that Jesus was proclaimed to be alive. To be risen.

In the life of Victor Fankel who was a psychologist of an original twist. His psychology was named A logotherapy@ meaning that one focuses on the word and the life of meaning. So it= s not surprising that he became a Catholic. He tells about how when he was liberated from Auswich, which is a notorious concentration camp in Poland. One day he left the camp and was going to the town nearby and it was a gorgeous day. The meadow was filled with flowers. The sky was exceedingly sharp and blue and larks were flying and singing. As he was walking no one was around and he looked up to the sky and then just fell to his knees and prayed and said: A O God I thank you for liberating me from my narrow prison and setting me free in your gracious space.@ And he just prayed there for a long time in gratitude. Then later on in his life when he was writing his memoirs he said on that day, at that very hour he felt that he began a whole new life, and step by step he became a full human being.

When the women went and told Peter and the apostles, Peter ran to the tomb to check things out. He was the Pope after all and was responsible for orthodoxy. And Luke doesn= t tell us that John is with him. So Peter goes in and looks around and he observes an obviously the cloths are in one place and then the head face cloths are rolled up but folded nicely. In the text that Luke gives us says: A He wondered.@ Meaning he began to realize this couldn= t happen naturally someone had to do something. And his faith began. How did it grow? It so unfolded that he could say, at least if we can say that the first epistle of Peter is his own words, A Blessed be God the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ who has given us new birth by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.@ And he so grew and matured in the spiritual life that he was willing to die but upside down because he knew he was not worthy of all that God has done to him in pouring out the richness and the unfolding graces that flow from the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus.

And Luke in this particular section that we heard proclaimed hints at where we can find the risen Lord. He tells the women don= t you recall what Jesus said. So you and I gather not to seek the living among the dead but we gather to seek the living among the living for Jesus is present in the liturgy in many ways but especially that he= s alive and that our prayer opens us to his presence and that he speaks to us in his Word. Not only that then he communicates not only in Word but in his very person in the gift of himself. As we look down the centuries of the church and its saints especially those devoted to the Eucharist, and in our own times, Mother Teresa who had her community worship before the Blessed Sacrament daily, grew and poured forth a love of Christ that flows from this mystery into the world through those who believe and those who receive the living presence of God right here in the Eucharist.

So for us the resurrected Christ is not a stranger. When did you encounter the risen Lord? If you were baptized you know that the meaning of Baptism is that sooner or later you must encounter the risen Lord. Where did he reveal himself to you? And how did it become for you unfolding of a life that came close to or at least was modeled on the lives of saints who in turn are simply the models the little figurines of Jesus= own presence in the world.

So I proclaim to you Jesus is alive. He is risen, indeed He is risen!