Readings (Year B):
Acts 10:34a, 37 – 43
Psalms 118:1 – 2, 16 – 17, 22 – 23.
Colossians 3:1 – 4
John 20:1 – 9
Reflection: Honor the rejected body of Christ
The first lectionary reading has the story of Sts. Peter and Cornelius as its backdrop. Cornelius was a non-Jewish (or gentile) commander in the same Roman army that oppressed Jews and crucified Jesus. Yet he is described as “an upright and God-fearing man, respected by the whole Jewish nation” (Acts 10:22). During prayer, an angel tells Cornelius to invite Peter, a Jew, to stay as a guest at his house. As a God-fearing gentile, Cornelius knows that Jewish law does not sanction cozy comingling between Jews and gentiles, but he invites Peter anyway.
Around the same time, Peter also has a vision. A voice from heaven tells him to eat unclean animals in violation of Jewish law. When Peter rejects the invitation, the voice tells him, “What God has made clean, you are not to call profane.” Peter then goes to Cornelius’s house and preaches the sermon we hear in the first reading. Unfortunately, the lectionary leaves out an important portion of Peter’s sermon. Peter says, “In truth, I see that God shows no partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34 – 35).
My friends, we live in a polarized nation and church. Deeply divided along ideological lines, we live in ideological silos that conceal, distort, and diminish the joyful truth of Our Lord Jesus Christ’s Resurrection.
Hear the Good News.
On Good Friday, we remembered the death of Jesus, who was rejected, despised, oppressed, condemned, crushed, and crucified.
At Easter vigils worldwide, God baptized people from all walks of life into Jesus’s death and resurrection so that their lives, like ours, might “became hidden with Christ in God.”
So, today, in the joy of Our Lord, Jesus Christ’s resurrection, we remember St. Mary of Magdala, who came “to the tomb early in the morning while it was still dark” to do the work of unfinished mourning. She honored and anointed the rejected, wounded, and crucified body of Jesus.
We listen to Mary, the Apostle to the Apostles, the first eyewitness of the resurrection, as she preaches to us in the Easter sequence. She says, “Yes, Christ, my hope, has arisen.” And we respond, “Christ indeed from death is risen, our new life obtaining. Have mercy, Victor King, ever reigning!”
Jesus Christ is “wonderful in our eyes” because “the stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” We know that “by the Lord has this been done” (Psalm 118:22 – 24). God wills the inclusion of rejected and despised people, and the truth of our shared baptismal identity and dignity compels us never to call anyone profane or unclean.
May the resurrection of Jesus Christ, “the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42), clear out all the “old yeast of malice and wickedness” and give us “the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Corinthians 5:7 – 8). Amen.
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