From the Pastor's Desk

Throughout the Octave of Easter we read the accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, His victory over death and the grave. Christians have been celebrating the Resurrection since the empty tomb was first discovered. That news of the risen Christ stood the ancient world of the first century on its head. In the centuries that followed the Christians carried the news of the risen Christ throughout the Roman Empire, even in the midst of terrible persecution.

Today, as there were then, there are skeptics who do not believe that Jesus rose from the dead, or who do not believe there is an afterlife. To many this world is all they believe in. Why do we/I believe Jesus literally and bodily rose from the dead, breaking the bonds of the grave? I look to those who were there, the first hand testimony of those who experienced the event as it was recorded in the New Testament. Mark’s Gospel written within twenty years after the passion, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, then there are St. Paul’s Epistles whom most Biblical scholars agree were written before the Gospels.

Mary Magdalene was the first to notify Jesus’s disciples of the empty tomb she had discovered earlier in the morning. She had entered the tomb in tears to take a closer look. After her eyes had adjusted she noticed two angels sitting at either end of the rock cut body bench with the burial cloths. Distracted, she answered the question of the angels of why she was weeping, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him”.

Without waiting for a reply, she turned to leave and came face-to-face with Jesus and was not able to recognize Him. He in turn asked her “Why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?” When He spoke her name, Mary immediately recognized Him and her grief turn to great joy. Mary Magdalene became the first person to experience the reality that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead. She heard His voice. She saw His face. She touched His glorified body. He was alive.

Continuing in the Gospels, we find the Apostle Thomas refusing to believe the other apostles until Jesus appeared again and challenged Thomas to feel His wounds, verifying He was alive. Time after time Jesus appeared to His followers. Later St. Paul recounted the events surrounding the resurrection, he reminded his readers, Jesus was seen by over five hundred brethren at once and that Jesus had also appeared to James, Jesus’s skeptical brother who finally believed and ultimately wrote his practical Epistle of James. ~Rev. Lewis Hejna