As the Masses of Easter Octave come to an end, so do the daily Gospel proclamations of Jesus’s post-Resurrection appearances. For some reason this year I was struck as though for the first time by an apparent incongruity. Why does the first Gospel announcement of Resurrection centre on the empty tomb? Why on Easter Sunday morning do we have just the account of an empty sepulchre?
Pursuing this thought further, I read what Benedict XVI wrote in Jesus of Nazareth. He says the Resurrection appearances are not the Resurrection; they are its “reflection”. This seems an apt description. Reflection is an image of something real. It captures light from something which makes it visible, but retains the appearance of a reality still greater than itself on which it depends. In other words, Jesus’s appearances to the disciples do not exhaust the meaning of the Resurrection.
