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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.