The empty tomb

ON the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.” So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first; he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in. When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place. Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed. For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead. REFLECTION AN EXTRAORDINARY EVENT OF EXTRAORDINARY IMPACT. Some groups fault Catholics for “hiding the Bible” or even for violating the Ten Commandments. The third commandment has to do with the Sabbath: “Remember the sabbath day—keep it holy. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the Lord has blessed the sabbath day and made it holy” (Ex 20:8, 11). Now why is it that Catholics and mainline Christian churches celebrate Sunday as the “Lord’s Day,” replacing the traditional Saturday, the seventh day?

The reason is what was discovered on the first day of the week, Easter Sunday. The women found the tomb empty and later Jesus appeared to the disciples as the Risen One. The Resurrection is at the heart of the Christian faith that it is now called Dies Domini, the Day of the Lord. The “Lord” is none other than Jesus Christ. The Christian faith stands or falls with the truth of the testimony that Jesus rose from the dead. St. Paul writes: “And if Christ has not been raised, then empty [too] is our preaching; empty, too, your faith. Then we are also false witnesses to God, because we testified against God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if in fact the dead are not raised” (1 Cor 15:14-15).

Pope Benedict XVI explains that the transfer from Saturday to Sunday is due not to any human whim: “If we bear in mind the immense importance attached to the Sabbath in the Old Testament tradition on the basis of the Creation account and the Decalogue, then it is clear that only an extraordinary event of extraordinary impact could have led to the abandonment of the Sabbath and its replacement by the first day of the week. Only an event that marked souls indelibly could bring about such a profound realignment in the religious culture of the week. Mere theological speculations could not have achieved this” (Jesus of Nazareth, Part II, p. 259).

To emphasize once more the importance of the day of Christ’s Resurrection, Pope John Paul II wrote his Apostolic Letter Dies Domini, on keeping the Lord’s Day holy. The opening words capture the immense significance of Sunday: “The Lord’s Day—as Sunday was called from Apostolic times—has always been accorded special attention in the history of the Church because of its close connection with the very core of the Christian mystery. In fact, in the weekly reckoning of time, Sunday recalls the day of Christ’s Resurrection. It is Easter which returns week by week, celebrating Christ’s victory over sin and death, the fulfilment in him of the first creation and the dawn of ‘the new creation’ (cf 2 Cor 5:17)” (Dies Domini, 1).