April 23, 2000 - Easter Vigil
"B"
H O M I L Y
This Gospel (Mk 16,1-8) opens with a
feminine touch and a smell of perfume. Three women went to buy perfumes
and came to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus. In order to understand their gesture, we must replace it in its
own context.
During the present liturgical year,
we usually follow the Gospel of Mark. It was his narrative of the Passion that we read on Palm Sunday and it
is his description of the events of the morning of Easter that we read this night.
Mark's narratives are concise. Each sentence is full of meaning and we must
pay attention to every detail. Immediately after Jesus' death, Mark says that the curtain in the
Temple was torn in two parts. The
curtain in question was probably not the curtain at the entrance of the Holy of
Holies, where only the High Priest could enter, but the curtain separating the
main area of the Temple, opened to all male Jews, from the outside area where
gentiles and women were admitted.
As a matter of fact, immediately after that,
Mark adds two sentences: one about a Roman military officer who declares:
"Clearly this man was the son of God"; and one about the women
present on Calvary and witnesses of the Resurrection.
According
to the law of Israel, Gentiles were excluded from the salvation promised to the
Jews, and the witness given by a woman had no legal value whatsoever. The tearing of the curtain in the Temple
means that full participation in the Christian community is now open to
everyone, across social, religious, sexual and ethnic lines.
Jesus' disciples formed a large
family, and each one had a particular relationship with Jesus. There were male and female disciples. Among the male ones, three had a closer relationship
with Jesus: Peter, James and John. They
were the witnesses of the Transfiguration and also of the agony. But there was also a large number of female
disciples. Of them Mark says three
things: a) they had followed him in Galilee; b) they has ministered to him; c)
they had come up with him to Jerusalem.
To
"follow Christ" meant to be his disciple. To "minister" to
him meant to share in his diakonia, his ministry. And to have "come
up with him to Jerusalem" meant to have accepted the full consequences of
discipleship and it meant also to have been a witness of his death and
resurrection.
Among
that group of women, three had a closer relationship with Jesus, and probably a
special role in the early Church: Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of James and
Salome. These three were near the
cross, with Mary the Mother of Jesus and John (while the other Apostles had
fled); and they are the three we find at the tomb, early on the morning of the
first day of the week. They receive the
first announce of Jesus' resurrection and will be the first witness of it.
The tearing of the curtain in the
Temple is therefore full of meaning, although attempts were constantly made
down the centuries to sew it up !... It means that with Jesus' death and resurrection the barriers between Israel
and the nations, Jews and pagans, men and women are broken down. The words of the angel to these three women
mentioned also the breaking down of another barrier: the one between flesh and
spirit, between body and soul. The
angel goes out of his way to show the place where the body of Jesus had lain,
and where he is no more; stressing that the Jesus who is risen is the one who
died and was buried there.
Of how many particularities are we
not slaves? – particularities of race, sex, education, religion. During this most holy night, let us strive
to rise above all of them so as to pass all together through the torn parts of
the curtain and to penetrate together in the New Temple through the door open
in the side of Christ, so that we may be able one day to be "one"
as He and His Father are One.