Homily for the Easter Vigil (B)

When Mary of Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome arrive at the tomb, prepared to anoint Jesus’ dead body, they find that the stone at the entrance of the tomb has already been rolled back.

Entering the tomb, they see a young man clothed in a white robe; an angel; and Mark recounts that the women are amazed.

And yet the angel says to the women: “do not be amazed! You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified. He has been raised; He is not here.”

Mark doesn’t record any reaction from these women, but one can easily imagine what they were thinking to themselves . . . ‘No kidding, He’s not here! That’s why we’re amazed! The stone has been rolled away, and His body is gone and now, you, an angel are speaking to us, telling us that Jesus who we saw crucified has been raised from the dead! And we’re not supposed to be amazed by all of this?!’

What the angel says next is, I think, the key to understanding why the women weren’t supposed to be amazed. He says: “go and tell His disciples and Peter, ‘He is going before you to Galilee; there you will see Him, as He told you.”

If we really examine this sentence closely, and grapple with its deep meaning, I think we will find that it is a much more powerful sentence than we might have originally imagined.

First, Galilee, where the angel tells the disciples to go: Galilee was the base of operations for Jesus’ ministry of preaching and healing. It was in Galilee that the disciples had first met and followed the Lord – it was their home, where their normal everyday lives were to be found.

And the angel tells the women, and through them the Apostles, to go back home – back to the beginning, so to speak – back to their everyday lives, even after the tremendous, life-changing events they had just witnessed in Jerusalem

Isn’t it the same for you and for me? Even after the most life-altering events – a marriage, or the birth of a child; a terrible accident, or the death of a loved one – eventually, we must return home, back to our everyday lives.

In very important ways, our life may indeed have been radically altered – by bringing a spouse or child into the home; or by losing a loved one, or losing our good health – and yet, there is still life to be lived, and work to do: there is laundry to be done, and meals to be prepared. There are still good days and bad days, waking and sleeping – in many, many other ways, life is still very much the same.

And that’s precisely what the angel sends the disciples back to, when he sends them back to Galilee – back to their normal lives. But he says something else that is crucially important: he says that Jesus is going there “before you” and that “there you will see Him.”

Friends, the great Good News of Jesus’ Incarnation, and now His death and Resurrection, is that there is no place we can go, not even suffering and death, that Jesus hasn’t gone before us. In becoming human, and being tempted, and facing betrayal and fear, and mourning the death of Lazarus, and suffering torture and death, Jesus has blazed a path; He has shown us the way to be truly human – He has shown us the way to the Father.


And what is more, He didn’t just go before us, He goes with us also! Wherever we go and whatever we experience, there, in the day to day events of life, we can see Him there with us – because it is into every moment of our lives that Jesus wishes to enter; not just the moments of some great revelation – moments of triumph and joy – but every moment, the good, the bad, and the mundane.

This realization that Jesus was present to them at every moment of their lives must have been amazing to the disciples. And if we truly believed this, and lived our lives in a way that proved we believed it, we too would be amazed at the difference it would make in our lives and the life of the world.

But still, the angel said, “do not be amazed.” So there is one last part of the angel’s message to examine: “He is going before you to Galilee; there you will see Him, as He told you.”

“As He told you.” The reason that all of this – Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead, His blessing of our normal lives and His presence in every moment of them – the reason these things shouldn’t amaze us, is that this is precisely what He had foretold and promised: and God always keeps His promises.

Our Easter celebration is the high point of the Church year, and along with Christmas, one of the two hinges upon which the Christian calendar revolves. Tonight, Jesus accomplishes the salvation He was born to win for us. God’s promise to not abandon us, to save us, and to be ‘Emmanuel,’ God with us, is fulfilled.

And as amazing and wonderful as this is, maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised. Perhaps, even after our forty days of Lent, and the special liturgies of the Triduum, perhaps its okay for us to go back to our homes, back to the routines of our everyday lives, and know that Jesus has gone before us, and that we will see Him there, as He has told us.