Easter Saturday | |||
Gospel Mark 16:9-15.
Saturday in the Octave of Easter
Today, we end this week with the Gospel of Mark which sums up the appearances of the risen Christ.
The liturgy of this first week of Easter plunges us into an atmosphere of inexpressible joy, of the Church alive in the Holy Spirit and growing rapidly.
Entrance Antiphon
The Lord led his people to freedom and they shouted with joy and gladness, alleluia!
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Night Office:
Origin;
Cited in Christ Our Light: Patristic
Readings on Gospel Themes, Vol 1, Friends of Henry Ashworth, Ed.. Tr. 1981, Exordium Books, Riverdale, MD. p. 166
Proclaiming the Gospel
Alternative Reading
From a commentary on the
Letter to the
Romans by Origen (Lib. 5, 10: PG 14, 1048-1052)
This work, now extant only
in a Latin translation by Rufinus, was probably written before the year 244.
Origen shows that baptism, referred to in the context, is a sacramental death, burial, and resurrection with Christ. The baptized die to sin and rise again to new life.
- Christ has presented each Christian with the death of sin itself, a gift of faith, as it were, deriving from his own death. Sin can have no more freedom of action in people who believe themselves to be dead, crucified, and buried with Christ, than in those have suffered bodily death. They are therefore said to be dead to sin. This is why the Apostle says: If we have died with him, we believe we shall also live with him. It is important to note the difference of expression: Saint Paul does not say "we have lived" as he says "we have died," but "we shall live." This is his way of showing that death is at work in the present world, but life in the world to come, when Christ is revealed. He is our life, hidden away in God. For the time being, therefore, as Paul himself teaches, death is at work in us.
- But it seems to me that this death which is at work in us has certain decisive moments. As with Christ there was the moment when Scripture says that he cried out with a loud voice and gave up his spirit; then there was the time when he was laid in the grave and its entrance was sealed up; and there was the morning when the women looked for him in the tomb and did not find him because he had already risen, though his actual resurrection was visible to none: so also in each of us who believe in Christ, there must be this threefold pattern of death.
- First of all, Christ's death must be manifested in us by a verbal acknowledgment of our faith in him, since the faith that leads to righteousness is in the heart, and the confession that leads to salvation is on the lips. In the second place, we must show it by putting to death those passions which belong to earth, as we carry Christ's death about with us wherever we go; this is what is meant by death is at work in us. Thirdly, we have to proclaim Christ's death by showing that we ourselves have already risen from the dead and are walking in newness of life. To sum up briefly and clearly: the first day of death is when we renounce the world; the second, when we renounce the sins of the flesh; the third, the day of resurrection, when we are fully perfected in the light of wisdom. In each believer, however, these different stages and his degree of progress can be discerned and known only by God, to whom alone are revealed the secrets of our hearts.
- Christ chose to empty
himself and take the form of a slave. He submitted to a despot's rule, and
became obedient even to death. By that death he destroyed the lord of death,
that is the devil, and set free all those whom death held captive. He tied up
the Strong One, conquering him on the cross, and broke into his house in the
underworld, the stronghold of death. He then plundered his goods; in other
words, he carried off the souls whom the devil held in bondage. This is the
meaning of Christ's own parable in the gospel: How can anyone break into a
strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he
begins by tying the strong man up? First of all, then, he bound him on the
cross and so entered his house, that is the underworld. From there he ascended on high, leading a host of captives, namely
those who rose with him from the dead and entered the holy city, the heavenly
Jerusalem. Because of this, Saint Paul rightly declares that death no longer
has any power to touch him.
Mark 16:15.
He said to them, "Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.
Second Reading
From the writings of Giuseppe Ricciotti (Life of Christ, 671-672)
We all have need of Jesus
Jesus left no echo of himself in the upper circles of the society
of his time. In the whole Roman Empire the historians ignore him, the learned
are unaware of his teachings, the civil authorities have at the most noted his
death in their records, as they would the death of a revolutionary slave, and
have given it no further thought. The very leaders of his nation, satisfied with
his disappearance from the scene, are more than ready to forget him altogether.
His institution seems to have been reduced to the agony of his own tortured
body on the cross. Before it the world stands to gloat in triumph over its agony,
just as the chief priests stood gloating at the foot of his cross.
And instead, this institution shuddering in agony suddenly rises
up again to gather into its arms the entire world. There are three centuries of
persecution and slaughter, three centuries which seem to prolong the agony of
the cross and re-echo the three days in the sepulcher, but after the third
century civil society becomes officially the disciple of Jesus.
The kingdom of the world is not overthrown, however, and the war
goes on in somewhat different forms but with the same obdurate tenacity as
before. Jesus, or his institution, becomes increasingly the sign of
contradiction in the history of human civilization. His utterly paradoxical
and burdensome doctrine has been accepted by infinite numbers of men and women
and practiced with intense love, even to the supreme sacrifice. Infinite
numbers of others reject it with inflexible pertinacity and hate it with a rabid
hatred.
The furious conflict goes on, not without frauds and treachery. Often
troops appear waving standards copied from the sign of contradiction and
shouting cries tuned to the precepts of Jesus; they proclaim brotherhood and
other altruisms unknown to the subjects of the world. But the deception does
not last; in the end the imitation betrays itself because its voice and its accent
are different.
Certain it is that Jesus is today more alive than ever among us.
All have need of him, either to love him or to curse him, but they
cannot do without him. Many people in the past have been loved with extreme
intensity - Socrates by his disciples, Julius Caesar by his legionaries, Napoleon
by his soldiers. But today they belong irrevocably to the past; not a heart
beats at their memory. There is no one who would give his life or even his
possessions for them even though their ideals are still being advocated. And
when their ideals are opposed, no one ever thinks of cursing Socrates or Julius
Caesar or Napoleon, because their personalities no longer have any influence; they
are bygones. But not Jesus; Jesus is still loved and he is still cursed; people
still renounce their possessions and even their lives both for love of him and
out of hatred for him.
No living being is as alive
as Jesus.
Responsory Lk 22:19;
Ex 12:27
The promise
he made to our ancestors God has fulfilled by raising Jesus to life. t He is the one God has appointed judge of the living and the dead, alleluia.
V.
God has made both Lord and Messiah this Jesus whom you cru-
cified. t He
is the ...
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