The Easter Mystery: A Call to Love

In the Gospel for Easter Sunday, we have St. John’s account of the two apostles, Peter and John, discovering the tomb empty. The evangelist records how John, the younger of the two, outran Peter and arrived first at the sepulcher. But the younger apostle deferred to Peter and allowed him to enter first. John followed, and the evangelist remarks of him that he saw and believed (John 20:8).

Seeing leads to believing. But why is it said of only one apostle that he believed? John is the beloved apostle (John 21:20). He sees and believes out of love.

Love is not an illusion. It is not a deception. It doesn’t mistake beauty for dread but sees the beauty in dread. The apostle who sees and believes out of love is there at the Cross (John 19:26). He is the only apostle on Calvary; all the others had scattered. The ten others (excluding Judas whom we believe took his own life) couldn’t bring themselves to see a suffering and dying Jesus. Their eyes couldn’t stand the sight.

Christian love doesn’t turn a blind eye to the unpleasant and the embarrassing. It sees and beholds it. Recall that just two days ago, in the Liturgy of the Passion on Good Friday, the priest held aloft a wooden cross and sang: “Behold the wood of the Cross, on which hung the salvation of the world” (Roman Missal). Our response was not exactly timid or retiring: “Come, let us adore,” we cried out (Roman Missal). All these centuries later, it’s easy to sing out in full measure—after all, we are just gazing on a replica of the real thing. But John saw the real thing: a real crucifixion and a real Risen Christ. Christian love doesn’t turn a blind eye to the unpleasant and the embarrassing. It sees and beholds it.Tweet This

Paul of Tarsus was a man who thought he saw things accurately, but he was terribly wrong regarding his first perception. In the Acts of the Apostles, the sacred author describes a blind Paul (Acts 8-9) before his conversion. The blindness is removed when Ananias lays hands on him (Acts 9:12). Amazingly, “things like scales fell away from his eyes and he regained his sight. He got up and was baptized” (Acts 9:18).

What accounts for this conversion? It is love. St. Paul calls it the more excellent way, leading the apostle to write that magnificent ode to love in his First Letter to the Corinthians. After a wonderful description offered by the apostle—“Love is patient, love is kind. . .”—the apostle still writes the following: “At present we see darkly, as if through a glass” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

We like to think we see clearly all the time, but that is not what happens. The Resurrection, however, does allow us to see splendidly with the eyes of faith. With the eyes of faith, we catch a glimpse of what is in store for those who love. There really is no surprise, therefore, when Jesus calls loving God the greatest commandment (Matthew 22:34-40). Yet, the most remarkable thing of all is not that we love God, but that He loves us first (1 John 4:10).

The Resurrection and love are interconnected on multiple levels, we might say. Let’s start then with the sacramental dimension since, as Catholics, we have an affinity for it intellectually and experientially.

The Lord will give us new bodies, St. Paul observes, on the pattern of the Son’s glorified body (Philippians 3:21). A foretaste of this mystery is in the act of Eucharistic Communion. We who receive Holy Communion eat the Bread which has come down from Heaven. Eating this Bread will bring us to eternal life (John 6:51). There isn’t a more profound union with the Lord that we can have now, in this life. As such, the reception of Holy Communion is always understood, doctrinally and pastorally, as a foreshadowing or intimation of heavenly life.

The heavenly destiny held in the reception of Holy Communion is extraordinarily important for us, but we can tease out other meanings of love in light of the Resurrection. One of these is the responsibility we bear toward others—be they our neighbors or not. St. John expresses briefly but forcefully this responsibility in the New Testament First Letter of John. There, he writes: “We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers. Whoever does not love remains in death” (1 John 3:14).

Love is transformative. To take but one example, men and women may be “swept off their feet” in the course of dating, courtship, and betrothal. They might then be thought of as “new persons” by those who have known them all their lives. What is behind such a transformation? It is the knowledge and acceptance that another person loves me like no one else does. This way of being treated causes me to “go outside of myself.” I “rise,” as it were, in having been treated this preeminently by just one other person on this planet.

My brothers and sisters (not my siblings but all the others with whom I share the same humanity), they are loved in and of themselves simply because we have all been created in the image and likeness of God. To love others—that is, according to St. Thomas, by effectively willing their true good—that is how my earthly life does not become a hellish prelude in anticipation of being consigned to Hades by divine judgment. The refusal to love is, in a manner of speaking, like keeping the boulder intransigently in its place at the front of the sepulcher.

We are called to love in a cruel world, and that means the reciprocity expected in love is oftentimes lacking. In fact, reciprocity may be missing even when and where no malice is imputed. But it’s definitely the case when and where the disciples of the Lord come under persecution. Jesus says as much in the Sermon on the Mount. Love your enemies, Jesus urges there; do good to those who hate you; and, finally, bless those who curse you (Luke 6:27).

Jesus sets the bar enormously high for the disciples. But why wouldn’t He since the truth is at stake. At the Last Supper, Jesus prays for the consecration of His apostles in the truth (John 17:17). Being made holy in the truth gave the apostles courage at Pentecost. However, courage is not a virtue we exercise intermittently or only sparingly. Since it is needed always in the Church’s work vis-à-vis the world, courage cannot be understood apart from having a love for the truth.

At the end of St. John’s Gospel, after the Lord’s Resurrection, Peter is asked by Jesus: “[D]o you love me?” (John 21:15). Three times, the question is put to Peter. And each time following Peter’s profession of love, the apostle is commanded to “feed” and “tend” the “lambs” and “sheep.” There is no other way to interpret this command but ecclesiastically. The Church is to be fed with the truth of the word of God. This is what the shepherd does. It is the very reason why he is a shepherd. 

A shepherd who proclaims the truth out of love inspires in the lambs and the sheep a love themselves for the truth. Those who love the truth then are less likely to renounce the Faith when and where it is under attack. The confessors and the martyrs give to the Body of Christ a historical resilience such that no merely human institution could withstand according to its own defining characteristics. Persecution may cause pain and death to individual members of the Church, but the Mystical Body of the Risen Lord has a pleroma, or fullness, which cannot be abrogated by any human foe.

We rejoice that God is love (1 John 4:8) and that the Resurrection makes this radiantly so despite the darkness of our world.