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The Lord is truly risen. Alleluia.
 When Jesus was buried on Good Friday evening the Jewish and Roman authorities would have given themselves a self-congratulatory pat on the back on a job well done. Jesus, the thorn-in-the side of the professional religious and deemed a potential troublemaker by the political elite, had been securely sealed in his grave for good. Neither party had been prepared for what the first Easter Sunday brought.
While still dark, on the first day of a new week, Mary Magdalen was the first to find the stone rolled away from the tomb and ran immediately to inform Peter and the other disciple. She presumed that the body had been stolen. Peter and the beloved disciple (John) went to check out the facts. (A woman’s evidence would not be accepted). After running together, Peter was the last to reach the tomb but the first to enter it and find the cloths that had been around the body and the head, on the tomb floor in their appropriate places. The other disciple (John) then entered the tomb after Peter. He saw and he believed. Through the eyes of faith, he saw not merely body cloths but evidence of the power of God in that empty tomb. John, the beloved disciple, alone of the disciples, stood at the cross. It is appropriate that he should be the first disciples to believe in his resurrection. He understood and believed Jesus’ predictions, and the scripture teaching that he would rise from the dead.
 Peter and the other disciples and Mary Magdalen had failed to understand the teaching of scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead.  Immediately after today’s gospel excerpt Jesus appears first to Mary Magdalen that Easter Sunday at the tomb, and later that evening, to the other disciples, (excluding Thomas), in the upper room.
This first narrative of the resurrection in John’s gospel is quite low key. It introduces the resurrection theme gradually. This step- by- step approach is probably true to the way the apostles came to believe the mystery of the resurrection. Their whole outlook had to be readjusted. In the dark, on that first Easter Sunday, to think or imagine, let alone to believe, that the crucified Messiah had become the risen glorified Lord would have been a paradigm shift too many for them. Later they believed in the resurrection and what an awesome mystery it was. We, too, need time to ponder and study and pray about it in order to appreciate its wonder and implications.
 The resurrection is the most dramatic event of human history. Easter Sunday counterbalances Good Friday. Every Good Friday experience in our lives will have an Easter Sunday outcome, too, if we but believe in the Lord’s power to do it.
While the empty tomb is not a proof of the resurrection, it was a first step, a pointer that led later to faith in the resurrection. Combined with the appearances of the risen Jesus (11 in all, in the New Testament) and the help of the Holy Spirit, it made the final step of faith easier for the disciples to take. Once they got the message of the resurrection into their heads and hearts, there was no holding them back from sharing that good news with others as we read in the Acts of the Apostles.
Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is our hope of resurrection too, and the foundation of our faith, our hope and our Christian love in its many forms.
Fr Geoff O’Grady