Easter Monday

Readings: Acts 2:14, 22-33; Psalm 16; Matthew 28:8-15

The English Dominican Cornelius Ernst once published an article entitled 'How to See an Angel'. It was partly, he said, because it is a funny title but also in order to speak about what he termed the 'subjective conditions' for talking about angels. We can do something similar in Easter Week, think about 'how to see the Risen Lord'. What are the 'subjective conditions' for such an experience? Or even for talking with an open mind about such an experience?

It is a particular angel that brings this to mind, the one we met in the gospel reading at the Easter Vigil, who appeared at dawn on the first day of the week, was accompanied by an earthquake, rolled back the stone from the entrance to the tomb, and sat on it (Matthew 28:2). Two groups of people saw this angel, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary who was with her, and the guards. But the experience of the two groups was quite different.

The women were addressed by the angel who told them that Jesus was risen, that they were to go quickly to tell the disciples this, and that they would all meet in Galilee. The soldiers on the other hand trembled with fear and became like dead men. The women left 'fearful yet overjoyed' - a phrase which captures well what we can imagine must have been the 'subjective conditions' of the disciples in the first days after the Resurrection of Jesus. The soldiers meanwhile went to the chief priests to tell them 'all that had happened'.

This is an interesting phrase. Think about it. 'All that had happened' means not just the women arriving but an angel looking like lightning, an earthquake, the stone rolled back and the angel sitting on it. Think then about the total lack of interest on the part of the chief priests in all that had happened. They were, presumably, Sadducees, believing in neither angels nor resurrection. So a massive doctrinal and ideological stone blocked their access to what this might mean. In their eyes none of it could have happened as the guards recounted it. They do not bat an eyelid, then, in proposing a political solution, to pay off the guards and promote what is after all the most obvious reductionist explanation of the disappearance of Christ's body: his disciples came and took it while the guards slept. (Forget about them being like dead men in the presence of the angel.)

Meanwhile another mind is considering these things. All that has happened is 'by the set plan and foreknowledge of God', who allowed Jesus to be killed but has now freed him from the throes of death (Acts 2:23, first reading today). It is another, and the most penetrating, way of seeing things, in which those who come to believe can share, a transformation of the subjective conditions for seeing the Risen Lord brought about by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We see how that transformation works in the preaching of Peter recounted in today's first reading.

So what has all this to do with me and with you? Various subjective conditions are obviously possible, some of which facilitate an encounter with the Risen Lord, others of which make that difficult or even impossible. That of the high priests and elders shuts things down completely: the news involves too radical a change for them (and a loss of power too, perhaps). The women are between fear and joy, a condition that leaves them open to an encounter with the Risen Lord. Perhaps, though, we are like the guards, not particularly committed one way or the other, somewhere spiritually between being asleep and being half-dead.

Finally there are the subjective conditions of God's heart and mind, if we can speak like that. The Holy Spirit is to be poured out by Jesus, risen and exalted to the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:33). The subjective conditions of the Blessed Trinity are therefore that the Father waits (and wants) to pour out the life and the love that flow now from Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. We will spend the next seven weeks meditating on these conditions, coming to see something of this reality.

May God send an angel to remove whatever blocks our access to that Life and Love: whatever fear, or indifference, or tiredness, or resistance would prevent us from seeing the Risen Lord. To live with his Life and to love with his Love is what it means to encounter the Risen Lord. It means having our fears removed and our doubts resolved. It means living in the fulness of joy.