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THE CHRISTIAN ADVENTURE
Homily of Fr Pierbattista Pizzaballa OFM,
Custos of the Holy Land
St. Saviour, 1st February 2012
I would like to dwell on the Gospel that we have listened to (John 20, 1-9), which is a
very particular Gospel: it is particular because Jesus is not mentioned in this gospel. There is no
longer his dead body, but nobody has seen him risen yet, there has not yet been the meeting
with the Risen One.
At the centre, the protagonist, there is an empty tomb and the burial cloths that had
enveloped the body of Jesus. John, more than the other Evangelists, gives great importance to
this empty tomb and places this episode between the death of Jesus and the encounters of the
Risen One with Mary of Magdala and his disciples.
Before meeting the Risen One, the disciples encounter this tomb and these burial cloths.
John gives such importance to this tomb and to these cloths, that he says that they are sufficient
for the beloved disciple for him to believe: "he saw and believed" (v 8).
What does this mean? Perhaps we are given a key to interpretation by the verb “to
wrap.” We find it the first time in the Gospel according to John in chapter 44, verse 11. It is
Lazarus, who comes out of his burial place "tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face
was wrapped in a cloth." In Greek, we find "dedemenos", in Latin, "ligatus", i.e., bound,
imprisoned.
Lazarus had been a prisoner of death, wrapped up by death, and now he emerges with
the signs of death that had bound him to it. The Word of Jesus is placed on him, the Word that
releases him from death, a word of liberation and life: "Untie him (Greek: luo, Latin: solvere)
and let him go" (John 11, 44).
In Chapter 19 of John, it is Jesus himself who is wrapped in a shroud, as Lazarus had
been. In v. 40, we can read that "They took the body of Jesus and bound it with burial cloths,
along with the spices" etc.... We find the same verb as in John 11, 44: here again the body of
Jesus, like the body of every man, is bound by death, it is "ligatus".
It is strange that this verb reappears here, in the Gospel that we have read today, but this
time it is not used to "wrap" the body of Jesus. Peter, who has entered the tomb, sees the shroud
that had covered the head of Jesus, "rolled up in a separate place" (v. 7). Consequently, not only
this shroud no longer wraps the body of the Lord, but it is rolled up. Death no longer has anyone
to bind, and now it is there, in a separate place, rolled up.
This means two things:
- The first is that Jesus is free from death, death no longer has him in its power. Jesus has
entered death, he has been bound by it but death was unable to retain him. Jesus defeated it.
- The second is that death has been destroyed, that this dramatic event, the Passion of Jesus, has
as its final outcome the destruction of death. Death, trying to kill Jesus, has in some way
destroyed itself. Such is the power of life that the Lord has released with his resurrection.
Death no longer binds the body of Jesus, but it no longer binds any other body. It is no
longer the master of a man's life. Not for nothing do we read on the night of Easter from the
letter to the Romans that "if then we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live
with him. We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more: death no longer has power
over him" (Romans 6, 8-9), and the Greek verb that we translate as "no longer has power" is the
verb "kyrio", from which "Kyrios", “Lord”, derives! Death is no longer the lord, the master of
man's life; from this moment, only Christ has the name of Lord (Philippians 2, 11). Nobody
else, not even death, is “Kyrios”, Master of the life of man.
Therefore, this is what the disciples see, this is why they believe. They see burial cloths
that are no longer of any use, they see a tomb that no longer holds anyone.
Before seeing the Risen One, the disciples have the experience of a death that has been
defeated. It is beautiful, as John comments, that they then believe, because until then they had
not yet understood the Scriptures (v 9). That is, the Scriptures can lead you there, on the
threshold of the empty tomb, but then, to understand them, you have to go in, and you have to
have the experience that you are alive, that real life is the one that is born from this empty tomb.
The piece finishes with a verse, v. 10, that we have not read today but which 1 think is
important, and that says: "Then the disciples returned home." It is a line that introduces the next
episode, so the disciples return home, but Mary of Magdala stays there and meets the Lord.
However, it seems to me that it also says something important: there is this "so they returned
home."
They return home because there is nothing else to do there: If the body had still been
there, they could have stayed there to honour it; if they had thought that the body had been
stolen, they would have started to look for it, as Mary of Magdala did. No, they have already
made one passage, they have seen and they have believed and so they return home. It is there
that they meet the Lord.
Well, all this is the Christian adventure. You meet the Risen one when you have the
experience of a death that in you has been defeated, and it has been defeated, thanks to his
death. The experience of evil, of grief, is something that remains in life, but no longer has the
strength to possess you, to bind you, to wrap you up. Therefore you remain in hope, and you
can go home, as John and Peter did. The sacraments, the Word, faith are the access to this
power of life that has been released from this empty tomb.
It also seems to me, however that this passage of the Gospel is one of those that,
paradoxically, best describes the experience of a pilgrimage in the Holy Land. People set off
together, like Peter and John, but each of us has his experiences, questions, need for salvation
and experience of faith, each of us at his own pace. How many people set off with a need for
salvation, for themselves, for their families, how many bonds of death bind the lives of people?
You arrive here and what do you find? You find signs of an absence, an empty tomb.
The pilgrimage is arriving with all of you inside this mystery of life, of resurrection, of hope. It
is plunging into this mystery: it is seeing and believing. And then to return, as Peter and John
did, home, to your own life, but returning transformed by an experience of salvation, with a
hope in your heart.
To us belong the gift and the task of being the first to live this experience, and then
helping others to do the same.