THE WORD BECAME FLESH

Monday in the Easter Octave, 2022

Acts 2:14, 22-33

Ps 16

Matt 28:8-15

Galilee

The mood of Easter is very well captured at the beginning of this morning’s gospel reading (Mt 28:8-15), ‘Filled with awe and great joy the women came quickly away from the tomb and ran to tell the disciples’. 

Easter is a feast that fills us with great wonder and joy because it tells us that God’s love is stronger than human sin, and the life God gives is more powerful than the death humans often inflict on each other. Easter also tells us that we do not walk through life alone. As the risen Lord says to the women in today’s gospel reading, ‘Go and tell my brothers that they must leave for Galilee; they will see me there’. As the risen Lord went ahead of his disciples to Galilee, so he goes ahead of us to all the places that we journey to and find ourselves in. Yet, there will always be people who will try to deny Easter and all that it means. That was so from the very first Easter Sunday, as is clear from this morning’s gospel reading.

 The chief priests and the elders put out a story, to the effect that the disciples of Jesus stole his body while the guards were asleep. You will find modern versions of that anti-Easter story in our newspapers today at times. There will always be those who want to deny what God has done and put something trite in its place. This Easter week, however, we rejoice what God has done, the story of Easter, of life’s triumph over death, of love’s triumph over evil.

Let us pray: Lord Jesus, may we always live in the joy and hope of the resurrection and never lose sight of its truth for our lives. Amen

+Remain blessed