Empty Tomb

Our Catholic Church believes that Christ's resurrection from the dead is the single-most important event in the bible. Not only did it fulfilled the ancient prophesies about the Messiah but has also culminated the salvation of humanity. All the preachings, miracles and sacrifices leading up to His crucifixion on Calvary would have been for naught if He did not came back to life. All His downtrodden apostles and disciples would have easily dismissed Him simply as one of the greatests prophets of his era should the tomb have not been emptied after 3 days.

Nobody really understood this during His 3 year ministry no matter how basic He narrates the events that was to unfold. Mainly it was due to their different expectation of his Messianic purpose at the time, thus seeing their would-be-king dying like a normal thief was devastating to them. His seemingly-meaningless death rattled their rich experience with Him during the past years.

His resurrection was the life-changing event for His scattered followers
One by one, the unbelief in their hearts turn to belief as Jesus showed Himself to them in the succeeding days.

They grow stronger in their faith.

In our present-day, we have the privilige to have the biblical accounts recorded and narrated for us beforehand.
It is like reading through the script before the movie is even completed. So we can relax a bit after the burial and sit back to enjoy the triumph of Jesus after 3 days.

Or can we?

Most certainly not.

We may have been spared the anxious and gruelling 3-day wait for the resurrection to happen, yet we are still tasked to seek within us how our "unbelief" can be genuinely turned to "true belief". We can not claim authentic faith in our lives if we continue to immerse ourselves in the whims and vains of this world; to practice dishonesty in our workplace, to occupy our thoughts with impure images, to continue withholding our services to those in need, to sacrifice family time in liue of money and career, to misjudge other people, to think highly of ourselves than others etc. Because if this is still our way of life, then it is still Good Friday in our lives - Jesus is still hanging and suffering on the cross to this day.

We must repent, confess and change our lives so the true meaning of Easter will grow within our grasp.

Only we ourselves can stop His suffering now.
Let us lay our Lord into his resting place, so He can rise up again.

Only we ourselves can keep the tomb empty afterwards.
Let us invite our Lord to fill our hearts instead.