Every year, on Easter Sunday morning, we listen. as we have just done, to the testimony of Peter before the household of Cornelius.   This testimony is a narrative of what Peter and his companions experienced after the suffering, death and burial of Jesus.

 

In that testimony before the household of Cornelius, Peter reviewed and summarized the life of Jesus: how he began preaching powerfully in Galilee with the anointing of the Holy Spirit on him, how he went about doing good and delivering all those who had fallen into the power of the evil one, how Peter and his companions were witnesses to all Jesus said and did throughout the countryside of Judea and up to Jerusalem, how, despite the fact that he went about doing good, he was brutally killed by being hung on a tree, how God rose him to life after three days, and how God allowed him to be seen, “not by the whole people but only by certain witnesses God had chosen beforehand”.  And now, Peter would declare boldly: “we are those witnesses”.

 

Peter and his companions were convinced that what they saw was not a ghost.  And, to let his hearers know that the Jesus they saw was not a ghost, since a ghost would neither eat nor drink, Peter went on to say: “we have eaten and drunk with him after his resurrection from the dead.”

 

It is because we believe the testimony of Peter that we celebrate the rising to new life of the crucified, dead and buried Jesus.  We were not there when he died.  We were not among the privileged eyewitnesses who saw him after he rose.  There was no journalist to report the news.  Our faith in the resurrection is based on the testimony of Peter and those eyewitnesses. 

 

But before Peter bore that testimony, Peter himself had received the testimony of Mary of Magdala.  She had gone to the tomb very early on the first day of the week and found the tomb empty.  Finding the tomb empty, she ran to Peter and the disciple Jesus loved to report to them that she found an empty tomb. 

 

“They have taken the Lord out of the tomb,” she said, “and we do not know where they have put him.” 

 

Her testimony made Peter and the beloved disciple to run to the tomb.  The disciple Jesus loved arrived first, having run faster than Peter.  Peter got there after him, and he too saw what the disciple Jesus loved found: an empty tomb.  The body of Jesus was no longer there.  They saw instead the linen cloths lying on the ground, and the cloth that had been used to wrap his head. 

 

Where then was the body? Why was the tomb empty? What could have happened?   Who could have taken his corpse away?  Neither Mary of Magdala, nor Peter, nor the disciple Jesus loved understood what they saw: an empty tomb.  But they would understand later.  They would understand when the Jesus whose body they could not find in the tomb would show himself to them.  The empty tomb left them confused.  Their confusion would dissolve into clarity and belief when he would begin to appear to them.  The empty tomb provided a necessary piece of evidence that Jesus had risen.  But the empty tomb did not provide sufficient evidence.  Its lack of sufficiency would be provided for by the appearances of Jesus to his disciples.  Peter’s testimony before the household of Cornelius is his testimony of those appearances, of his being one of the privileged persons to whom Jesus would appear.

 

But, does Jesus still appear today?  Does the risen Christ show himself to us?  Or, is it just a bedtime story?  Do we want to see the risen Christ?

 

Today, the risen Christ continues to appear to those who have faith.  The privileged persons to whom he appears are the men and women of faith who believe in the testimony of Peter, the testimony of the community of faith, testimony of the Church.  And as he would later say to the Doubting Thomas, who would not believe the testimony of the Church, for when he did not believe the other disciples he did not believe the Church, “You believe because you see me.  But blessed are those who do not see me and yet believe.” 

 

It is said that seeing is believing.  But for us, if we have faith, believing is seeing.  Unless we believe the testimony of Peter, the testimony of the Church, of our community of faith, we will not be able to see the risen Christ.  For there are things we do not see but yet believe.  A man and a woman fall in love and marry each other, confiding themselves to each other, without seeing whether or not they will hurt each other.  Without the leap of faith, we cannot see anything in life, and even what we see, we may not understand.

 

Love makes us leap in faith.  Love of one another makes us see Christ in each other.  The risen Christ I desire to see is my neighbor.  If I love my neighbor, it is the risen Christ that I see and love.  If I love my neighbor, it is the risen Christ that I love.  When we share our food with the hungry, when we place ourselves before others as servants, when we live lives of decency, we too can say like Peter, “we have eaten and drunk with him after his resurrection from the dead.”

 

Not only is Christ Jesus risen, we too, by our faith, by our baptism, have risen with him.  For, by rising from the dead, he has restored our life.  And, as the Letter to the Colossians reminded us in the Second Reading, “and now, the life you have is hidden with Christ in God.  But when Christ is revealed—and he is your life—you too will be revealed in all your glory with him.”

 

With our faith that Christ is risen to new life, and with our faith that we are hidden in the risen Christ, we can become better persons, better Christians, and better citizens of Nigeria.  With our Easter faith manifesting itself in the love we show to others, the power of the risen Lord is in us.  We too have risen with Christ.  At every Mass, we eat and drink with him in the sacrament of his body and blood, so that we too can testify like Peter: “we have eaten and drunk with him after his resurrection from the dead.”

 

Fr. Anthony A. Akinwale, OP