EASTER SUNDAY 20 APRIL 2025 | SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER 27 APRIL 2025
LECTIONARY READINGS
First Reading: Acts 10:34, 37-43
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 117(118):1-2, 16-17, 22-23
Second Reading: Colossians 3:1-4 / 1 Corinthians 5:6-8
Gospel: John 20:1-9
Link to readings
The scripture readings set out for the Easter Sunday Mass remain unvaried across the three-year cycle. However, an alternative, 1 Cor 5:6-8, is given for the Second Reading, Col 3:1-4, and at evening Masses the account of the risen Lord’s appearance to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, Luke 24:13-35 (otherwise set down for the Third Sunday, Year A), may be read.
It is perhaps odd that, unless this latter option be taken up at Sunday evening Masses, neither the Easter Vigil Gospel nor that of Easter Sunday recounts an appearance of the risen Lord. We hear simply about the disciples’ discovery that the tomb of Jesus was empty.
UNNERVING DISCOVERY
The scene from the Fourth Gospel, John 20:1-9, set out for today’s Gospel, joins the Synoptic tradition in associating Mary Magdalene with this totally unnerving discovery. Later, of course, she will meet the risen Lord (John 20:11-18). But now, following her discovery, she comes running to Simon Peter “and the other disciple” (the significant figure this gospel dubs “the Disciple whom Jesus loved”). Her running and her plaintive cry, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don’t know where they have put him”, bespeak the anguish of continuing love and loss. The inference – Johannine irony at its best – is that some human agency (the gardener, the authorities, grave-robbers) have worked this final indignity on the Lord; even in death his body is to have no peace. So, we are left with this tremendous sense of emptiness and loss.
ANXIOUS LOVE
At Mary’s report, Peter and the ‘other disciple’ likewise set out on a ‘race’ of anxious love. By having the other disciple best Peter in the race and arrive first, the evangelist sets the scene for a very significant distinction concerning what is to be found in the tomb. Though he arrives first, the other disciple does not enter the tomb immediately.
Instead, he bends down and sees linen cloths on the ground. Peter goes in and, once inside, sees something else besides. Inside the tomb one can see not only the linen cloths in which Jesus’ body was wrapped but also the cloth (corresponding to what we would call a ‘handkerchief’) that covered his face. This is rolled up neatly and set in a place by itself. What Peter deduces from this we do not know. But when the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’ eventually enters the tomb and sees the complete picture regarding the grave clothes, the neatly rolled-up face cloth functions for him as a ‘sign’: an indication that the absence of Jesus’ body was not due to human agency – grave robbers do not bother to fold up neatly clothing they leave behind – but to a majestic, divine resumption of life.
CLAIM FULFILLED
The One who had called himself ‘the Resurrection and the Life’ (11:25), has fulfilled his claim to have the power to lay down his life and likewise to take it up again (10:18). As the Gospel comments, the beloved disciple ‘saw and he believed’. He did not see the risen Jesus – as later Mary Magdalene, Peter and the other apostles and eventually Thomas would – but he saw enough to remember now the scriptural prophecy that the Messiah would rise from the dead. In this way, before all the others, he came to faith in the resurrection.
My sense is that the unnamed ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’ (traditionally identified with John the son of Zebedee) stands in there for all of us – believers of subsequent generations. It may be that he is left unnamed precisely so that we can identify with him and enter the story through him. Unlike Mary Magdalene, Peter and the insistent Thomas, we do not actually see (or feel or touch) the risen Lord and yet we believe. We can see emptiness and absence not as failure and loss but, in the light of Scripture, as mysterious evidence of the divine power to bring life out of death, to call back into being ‘things that are not’ – as St Paul says, identifying our faith with that of Abraham, (Rom 4:17).
FIRST READING
The First Reading, from Acts 10:34, 37-43, gives an account of the sermon Peter preached in the house of the pious Roman centurion Cornelius. It provides a neat summary of the essential Gospel, which the four canonical gospels expand. The Gospel reaches out to embrace the Gentile world, previously considered “unclean”; its inherent reconciling power overcomes the alienation of that world from God.
SECOND READING
In the Second Reading, from Colossians 3:1-4, Paul reminds his audience of the way in which even now, albeit in a hidden way, they have a share in the risen life of their Lord. Keeping constantly in mind the thought of their sharing in his triumph over sin and death should light their present path with hope and joy.
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SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER YEAR C – 27 APRIL 2025
As the Father sent Jesus into the world so he now sends the disciples, to be in their turn and through their mutual love for one another, the embodiment of that same divine love.
LECTIONARY READINGS
First reading: Acts 5:12-16
Responsorial psalm: 117(118):2-4, 22-27
Second reading: Apocalypse 1:9-13, 17-19
Gospel: John 20:19-31
Link to readings
It is understandable that the Church should celebrate the octave of Easter by reading as the Gospel the appearance ‘eight days later. of the risen Lord to Thomas (20:19-31). It is important, however, not to neglect the highly significant events that take place on the earlier occasion, late on Easter Sunday.
In his long discourse at the Last Supper on the night before he died, Jesus promised the disciples that they would receive ‘another Paraclete’ (the Spirit) to be their guide, enlightener and comforter for the time when he would no longer be physically with them. Now on this Easter Sunday evening he makes good that promise in what is really the ‘Johannine Pentecost’.
REASSURANCE
The disciples are fearful, huddling behind closed doors. Jesus comes among them and reassures them: ‘Peace be with you’. He shows them the physical reality of his hands and his side to guarantee his identity and continuity with the Lord they had known. Their fear now turned to joy, he announces that they are to be a new link in the chain of mission that he has from the Father: as the Father has sent him into the world – to be the embodiment of divine love in the world – so he now sends them, to be in their turn and through their mutual love for one another, the embodiment of that same divine love (13:34-35; 17:17).
Jesus then imparts the Spirit to the disciples by breathing on them (the same Greek word pneuma serves for both ‘breath’ and ‘spirit’). He explains this gift of the Spirit in terms of the power to forgive – and correspondingly to retain – sin. We might well ask why he specifies the gift of the Spirit in this way. Basically, it has to do with reconciliation: the reconciliation of the human race to the Father, which is the essential work of Jesus. John the Baptist had pointed him out as ‘the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world’ (1:29, 35). Jesus had died on the cross as the (Paschal) Lamb whose bones were not broken (19:36). Now the gift of the Spirit is empowering the Church to take up that reconciling mission for the time ahead when Jesus will no longer be physically present.
THOMAS’ DOUBTS
Thomas is one of the most clearly defined characters in the Fourth Gospel. Born loser, realist, pessimist, he has missed out on the Easter night appearance of Jesus. He won’t believe in the resurrection simply on the other disciples’ claim ‘we have seen the Lord’. He lays down his explicit, highly ‘physical’ conditions.
With the divine ‘courtesy’ that seems to be a feature of the risen Lord in all the appearance stories of the gospels, eight days later Jesus is prepared to meet Thomas’ conditions exactly. But, at the sight of Jesus, Thomas abandons them. Instead he, the late-comer, the obtuse one, makes the most exalted act of faith contained in the gospel: ‘My Lord and my God!’. The confession takes us back to the Prologue: ‘... the Word was with God and the Word was God’ (1:1); ‘No one has ever seen God; it is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known’ (1:18). At this climactic moment of the gospel it is Thomas, the hesitant, the doubter, who brings out the full identity of Jesus.
But that is not the end. Jesus adds a comment that brings us into the picture too. Thomas has believed because, like Mary Magdalene and the other disciples present in the room, he has seen the risen Jesus. Others – succeeding generations of believers – will not see Jesus. Unlike Thomas, they have to believe simply on the report handed down in the Church’s preaching: ‘We have seen the Lord’. On them – that is, on us – Jesus pronounces a blessing: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe”.
BLESSED THE BELIEVERS
Why ‘blessed’? Because from them/from us a faith greater than that of Thomas and the others will be required: the greater the faith the more scope for the power of God.
So the first ‘edition’ of the Gospel (chapters 1-20) ends with this solemn assurance that believers of all subsequent generations are in no way at a disadvantage compared to the original disciples who saw and heard and touched the Lord. The written gospel imparts to those prepared to believe all the knowledge necessary for a life-giving encounter with the Lord.
FIRST AND SECOND READINGS
The First Reading, Acts 5:12-16, jumps ahead rather of the setting of the Gospel to describe how the apostles, empowered with the Spirit, were now able to healing and exorcising ministry previously conducted by Jesus.
The Second Reading, Apocalypse 1:9-13, 17-19, is notable towards the end for the splendid self-description of the risen Lord, introducing himself to the seer, John.