The Disciples Find the Empty Tomb
No one in the Gospel accounts actually saw Jesus in the act of rising from the dead. When the disciples came to the tomb, he was already risen. The tomb was empty and the wrappings were still there where he had been buried. If someone had come to steal the body and somehow managed to get past the sleeping guards, it hardly seems likely that they would have gone to the trouble of unwrapping the body before taking it away. The time needed to do undo the burial cloths would increase the chance of their being found out by the guards still nearby. No, the body was not stolen. The tomb was empty because Jesus had risen and is alive!
(Msgr. Vaccari)
The Disciples Discover the Empty Tomb
Reading: "Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed" (John 20: 8).
On Good Friday, one of our members came out to pray with us. We had the tabernacle in the large room with the Blessed Sacrament. She was sitting before the tabernacle in a kind of a state of awe. In fact, when I walked into the room she said, "Where do they put Jesus on Good Friday? I went to my parish Church and it felt so empty."
Our Churches, our homes and our lives are empty without the Eucharist. Without Hi real presence it is not an exaggeration to declare that we are empty tombs. We are a place where Jesus was, a distant memory, a faint hope of something to come, but we are EMPTY. When we receive Him, the Eucharistic Jesus, our whole interior world changes and it is indeed a noticeable, discernable, unseeing, but a real difference. When we stand before the risen Christ in his Eucharistic presence we know with deep conviction, "Our Savior lives!" We see him lifted on the altar and we say with Thomas, "My Lord and My God."
Dear Lord, thank you for the gift of faith and for eyes that can discern your face in the bread and wine on the altar. We see and we believe. Amen.
(Teresa Monaghen)
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