Easter Saturday

Stational Archbasilica of San Giovanni in Laterano

We return for the third time during the Triduum and octave to the mother of all churches — but today the emphasis falls not on the great basilica itself, nor even on the baptistery alone, but on the unity of the entire Lateran complex as the institutional center of the universal Church. This is the church where neophytes — those baptized at the Vigil — would gather throughout the octave still wearing their white baptismal garments, still luminous with the newness of their initiation, still being catechized in the mysteries into which they had been plunged. The octave was, for the early Church, the period of mystagogy — the unfolding of the sacramental mysteries to those who had just received them. Today, the last day before the Second Sunday of Easter, the great basilica gathers the neophytes for the final time in their white garments. Tomorrow they will lay them aside. But today they still wear the white, and the Church looks at them and sees what she herself is called to be: newly born, astonished, unable to stop talking about what she has seen.

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First Reading: Acts 4:13-21 Peter and John released — “We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard”

Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 118:1, 14-21 “I will give thanks to you, for you have answered me”

Gospel: Mark 16:9-15 The summary of appearances — the hardness of heart — “Go into the whole world”

Mark’s Gospel is terse to the point of abruptness on the resurrection appearances, and the longer ending assigned today reflects the early Church’s instinct to gather the witness tradition into a single summary. He appeared to Mary Magdalene. She told them. They did not believe. He appeared to two disciples on the road. They told them. They did not believe. He appeared to the eleven at table and rebuked their hardness of heart.

There is something almost comforting in this catalog of disbelief. The resurrection was not self-evidently obvious to those who encountered it. It required the testimony of witness upon witness, appearance upon appearance, before the frightened community began to let the impossible become thinkable. Faith is not credulity. It is the response to an accumulation of testimony that finally becomes undeniable — and even then, as Thomas will show us tomorrow, it may ask to touch the wounds before it kneels.

But then the rebuke gives way to commission. The hardness of heart is not the last word. “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.” From the locked room to the whole world. From paralyzed grief to universal mission. The same disciples who could not believe the women’s testimony are now sent to bear testimony themselves, to the ends of the earth.

The neophytes in their white garments are Mark’s gospel enacted in living flesh. A week ago they did not belong to this. Now they do. A week ago the name of Jesus was a name they were still drawing close to. Now it is the name in which they have been baptized, sealed, and fed. They did not believe — and then they encountered, and now they go.

Tomorrow they lay aside the white garments. But what the garments signify cannot be laid aside. Baptism is permanent. The commission is permanent. The Risen Lord who appeared to the reluctant, the grieving, the frightened, and the skeptical is the same Lord who sends — sends us, sends them, sends the whole Church into the world that does not yet know what it is missing.

One more day of the octave remains. The diamond turns toward its final facet.