• Acts 10:34, 37-43. The Apostles are personal witnesses that Jesus rose from the dead, for they “ate and drank with him.” They are commissioned to preach Jesus, to whom the prophets testify and through whom there is forgiveness of sin.
• 1 Corinthians 5:6-8. The risen Christ is the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth by which we rise from the dead.
• John 20:1-9. Mary Magdalene, Peter and John all arrive at the tomb, one with wonder, the others at first with perplexity, all eventually with faith that Jesus is risen.

Thoughts for Your Consideration: By Fr. Sebastian MacDonald, CP

Easter brings a sense of freshness and newness to life around us that has the unusual capacity of evoking the familiar, while injecting a note of strangeness. It is almost as if we celebrate a new life at Easter in combination with the old, to form an amalgam peculiar to Easter.

The readings above from the gospel of John, especially the expanded section, show Mary Magdalene experiencing this combination of the old and the new in her encounter with the risen Lord Jesus.  The new is evident in her being nonplussed at seeing someone she took to be the gardener; the old makes a comeback at the sound of her name on His lips: “Mary”. It triggered instant recognition amid mystery.

Mary’s conundrum has remained part of the Easter, indeed, the entire Christian, experience down through the ages, a version of “now I see you, now I don’t”. The authentic Christian is every bit as human as everyone else: plus. This can be exasperating, not only for those trying to understand Christians, but also for Christians trying to understand themselves.

The Easter message is one of “surplus”. It presents the risen Christ to us as He was: plus. And this spills over into the entire existence of a Christian person. An area of life where it abounds with tantalizing bothersomeness is justice. Everyone, Christians included, likes to think he or she is committed to justice. We often understand that to mean: restoration, returning something to its original condition. “I want justice” usually means: “I want something returned or restored to me, because it’s mine, it belongs to me, and I have a right to it.”  Sometimes this attitude even seems tinged with an element of revenge, or getting even: “I want to restore a level playing field” on which to compete in life.

Catholic social doctrine on justice, especially under Pope Benedict XVI, would amplify this attitude with a bit of Easter quality.  It indeed supports justice, restoring the way “it was”.  But it adds: plus.  That is to say, access to decent housing, minimal health care, adequate education, suitable environmental conditions, domestic and international security and peace  needs to be restored to those lacking such housing, medical attention, education, ecological surroundings, and security. They are not “add-ons” to being human; they are constituents of being human.  Without them, one is inhuman.

This is not just a Christian position.  This is a reasonable, commonsense appreciation shared across the board of what it means to be a human person.  There is, however, a special Christian addendum to the above: it’s the Easter addition of plusness.  Pope Benedict calls it the sense of care and concern that accompanies the provision of these things.  It is one thing to provide a school building in a deprived neighborhood.  It is another thing to staff it with competent, concerned faculty.  This latter element is the “plus” element that a Christian sense of justice brings to the process.  It is the “personal touch”.

It was one thing for a perturbed Mary Magdalene to identify a gardener before her at the tomb; it was another thing to see the “Rabbouni” before her. That was the bonus element, which Easter is all about: the risen Christ. The sound of His voice personalized the sight of the gardener’s features.  What she was about to receive was more than information. She was getting back a friend, moving beyond the impersonal to a delightfully personal encounter.

Elsewhere, today’s readings suggest it is one thing for Paul to alert the Christian to the familiar dough about to be baked; but it’s another thing for him to call attention to an element of plusness: a wee bit of unleavened sincerity and truth.  Likewise, it is one thing for St. Peter to proclaim what Jesus had done during His time of preaching; it is another for Peter to pass on additional good news: he has been commissioned to do the same. This is a spillover effect from the resurrection event: an extra.

To understand Easter as, among other things, a justice event, is to enrich its standard significance as a restoration, as all justice is, with a potent addition.  It celebrates justice in terms of the restoration of Christ—the RISEN Christ—much like What and Who He was, but a smidgeon different.  It’s that difference making Easter a special event for justice.  Easter enables justice to achieve the highly personal quality Mary experienced in being recognized for who she was: “Mary!”