The tomb of the Lord is empty. He has risen as He said, alleluia! A happy and blessed Easter to all! In the Gospel today, Saint Mary Magdalene said, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.” How about us, are we still looking for the Lord? Do we still not know where to find Him? Oftentimes, we may have spent countless hours and energy pursuing material goods or riches, worldly honors, and applause of people, especially on social media. But all these are futile if we look at them to fill the void that is within our hearts, not one of these could fully satisfy us. It is only the Lord that can fill the hole within our hearts. He lives within us and has created us for Himself. Now, He redeemed us through His passion, death, and resurrection. Although sinners, we now have the hope of eternal life that was once shut for us.
The disciples did not understand why the tomb was empty. The Gospel today says that they do not understand yet that the Lord must rise from the dead. Indeed, the Lord has risen. He was not imprisoned by death as many would have thought Him to be. Because of His rising, we too are not prisoners of sin, worldliness, materialism, and other secular ideologies which seem normal but they, unknowingly, enslave us. They enslave us because the world wanted us to follow them rather than Christ. The world and society today want us to follow trends in fashion rather than to dress modestly according to our dignity – a dignity that Christ bought by His Most Sacred Body and Blood. The world and advertisements push us to seek wealth for ourselves rather than to seek wealth for the Kingdom of God by doing good works through the resources we have. All these wrong thinking will enslave and entrap us if we are not aware of them. This is why a lot of people may still be living in the tomb – they are dead to charity and good works, and dead in the spiritual aspect because of the lukewarmness of faith.
Being a Christian, a true follower of Christ is being free – free to love, free to give oneself, time, and whatever we can to Him for the poor. This is real Christianity – out of our comfort zone, out of our laziness and selfishness, out of the tomb. If any of these are still impeding us from living a true Christian life, then we may have to truly meet the Risen Christ in prayer to ask Him for forgiveness to renew us and eventually change our lives. In the sacrament of confession, we could die and be born again as new persons in the Risen Jesus. We can always start again, and our death shall end in resurrection in Christ if we choose to do what’s right.
Amen. +
Marga de Jesus | OLA Social Communications
