East1A23.  Originally this speech was addressed to the Roman centurion, his relatives and close friends.   The Church has placed it here to address all the People of God so to give us a narrative background for Easter Sunday.  What Jesus did on Good Friday was to offer us who receive him as our Savior the opportunity to live now and forever as faithful sons and daughters of God our Father.

John 20:1-9.  I imagine that Mary Magdalene was drawn to the tomb when it was so early that Sunday morning though it was still dark since Jesus was everything to her, even though she could only expect that the stone over the tomb would still be in place.  However, Mary, seeing the stone removed from the tomb, did not even think to peek inside, imagining that the tomb could well have been robbed; but immediately ran to tell the disciples.  She said to them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.”  The disciples saw that the tomb was empty but apparently did not comprehend what had come to pass, “for they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”   Believing, even we do not yet understand, is the way of faith.

Colossians 3:1-4.  The traditional symbolism of baptism is to be immersed in the water as a sign of being buried and dying to our sinfulness so then to rise to our new life in Christ Jesus.  Paul wrote in Romans 6:5: “For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection.”  While we live physically in this world, this world easily becomes what life is all about for us.  To live in Christ is to live passively to this world but interiorly active to the God who is really our life.  Life in Christ demands that we draw upon his love as our life in complete submission to his will.  God, and God alone, is life.  Everything else is passing.