“But the angel said to the women: Do not be afraid; for I know you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said’ (Mt 28:5-6). "He is not here": ”: words found also in Mark and Luke. But the angel says a lot with them. That "He is not here." is like an affectionate rebuke. He is taking the women – and with them, us – beyond their narrow, all-too-human vision.
He is not in the tomb. Jesus is not in our tomb-like mentality, our pessimism, which assumes that death always has the last word, that it is greater even than God. How often our vision is so narrow. We talk of tunnel vision: we could also talk of tomb vision.
So often, in practice, we think that God has been defeated, that there is nothing we can do, that death and even the devil have effectively triumphed, and all we can do is to show piety towards the dead, stay faithful to a memory, as we fade and decline with it.
But Christ is not in a tomb-like mentality, that accepts defeat, that resigns itself to decline, a simple veneration of the past incapable of generating dynamic action in the present. Christ is not in sad nostalgia. Tomb vision is almost to lock oneself in the tomb together with the corpse.
"He is not here." He is not in your sentimentalism which, as touching and generous as it might be, is good for nothing. You have come to bury the dead as an act of loving piety, a sentimental final tribute. Christ is not in such sentiment which, as praise-worthy as it is, looks to the past and not to the future, and assumes defeat and not the victory of God.
"He is not here." He is not in your discouragement, your merely human vision which fails to consider the infinite power of God. He is not in your lack of faith. He is not in your all too limited understanding of Scripture and of the prophecies which had clearly announced the Resurrection but you had failed to understand their meaning. Christ is not in our shallow reading of Scripture which sees it only as a book of the past and not the living Word of God today.
Christ is not in your materialism, understood here as giving too much weight to material considerations: “Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?” (Mk 16:3).
When we feel ourselves getting down, exaggerating practical problems, viewing things pessimistically, assuming defeat, then remember those three Latin words: "Non est hic", "He is not here". He is not in those ways of thinking. He is outside. He has burst open the tomb, he has knocked out the guards, he has overcome the scheming of his enemies, he has vanquished human power, he has conquered sin and death. Life has triumphed. Love has triumphed. He is not here. He is the God-man alive and risen!
Homily on the readings of Easter Sunday I (A)
The priest Luis Herrera Campo offers its nanomiliaA short one-minute reflection for these Sunday readings.
