After my father passed away ten years ago, I became a little more mindful about my own future. We all did in my family, and we began to make some arrangements for ourselves. I purchased a plot of ground next to where my parents and some of my family would eventually be buried. For a while, to diffuse the morbid tension, my running joke would be: “So I’m finally a landowner!” “I own six feet of earth.” Of course, I meant that plot of earth to bury my body when I’m gone.
The mystery we commemorate tonight makes me a liar; makes us all liars.
We celebrate the mystery of an empty tomb. Christ is risen from the dead!
The holy women arrive early in the morning to visit the Lord’s tomb on the Sunday after His death on the Cross. That first Easter Vigil is suddenly interrupted by an earthquake and an angel who – like a spiritual giant – rolls back the stone covering the entrance of Jesus’ tomb which was hewn into rock.
“He is not here,” the angel says, as he sits on the stone, showing them the empty tomb like some heavenly tour guide. “He has been raised.” In fact, the two Maries, after hearing the angel’s good news, almost immediately see the risen Lord for themselves and they fall down to worship Jesus in His divine glory.
Jesus doesn’t need this tomb anymore: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Mt 8:20) Jesus never really had a place to lay His head during his public ministry; He doesn’t need any now.
So, we are not truly landowners; at most, we are renters, because we are created to live forever, body and soul.
The earth that we own is – really – just our self. I’m 5 foot 7, so this is … about 6 feet of earth, 6 feet of clay, that is animated by an immortal soul. (Okay, maybe 6 feet with the mitre!) We are matter and spirit, intelligence, will, heart, emotions, tissues, blood, muscles, skin and fat – all this.
And we are made for life, for everlasting life: resurrection. Life with God, fully human, body and soul forever.
And we are also our relationships, with God, family, Church, friends and neighbours. That is what is lasting. That is what is somehow ours, although, as we see in our many Scripture readings tonight and every psalm sung, that it is all truly God’s gift to us.
God has given us about six feet of clay. We are and have what God has made and given – except sin. Sin is really what is ours; sin is our invention and has been the mark or blemish, the stumbling block to God’s plan for us almost from the beginning.
Our No is the price of God’s gift to us: our love and freedom. God wants His children to love Him freely and not be forced, so the dangerous possibility is a No, a No to our God, a No to what is good for us, a No to what we are made for.
The readings of our Vigil tonight have traced out this love story (our history) for us tidily from beginning to end. God did not want to take No for an answer because it would mean disaster for us. So, we have re-told the story of grace tonight: how time and again the Lord has intervened, first created, then rescued and educated, cajoled, wooed, and enticed us humans to come back to the Water we are truly thirsting for, the One for whom we are made, to come back to God who is the only Fountain of Life.
I said our Scriptures tonight show us the beginning and the end of our story. God did what we could not do. God finally sent all of his Grace, His only Son, into our world as a Man to enter the Void that we had ‘created’ between God and us. (Without God, all we can make is empty!) God sent His Son into the Void to search for every sheep … even the one farthest from God. That’s what we mean when we say: “He descended into hell.” On the Cross, Jesus asked to take on all the pain caused us by our forsaking God, all the hatred aimed at God by people through all ages. He experienced the desolation of the sinner far from God and asked His Father to “forgive them” … to forgive us.
The resurrection of Jesus in His human Body and Soul is His triumph over death: the spiritual and interior death of sin and the bodily death that mimics it! He conquers my death and your death, spiritual death, bodily death. The earthquake in the Gospel tonight suggests all the power and energy of Christ’s Resurrection needed to empty the tomb and resurrect the body of humanity. The earth heaves and opens. The mighty angel (a little exhausted?) must sit down on the stone after he rolls it back. The Roman soldiers, guarding Christ’s tomb, fall down faint “like dead men,” forced to fall down before the Life emerging from Christ’s tomb. The holy Maries, willingly, fall down before their Risen Friend.
On this Easter night, we all return to the Fountain of Life and find the Risen Jesus at the baptismal font. A number of people are here among us seeking new life in Christ through the Sacraments and want to receive themselves back from the Lord reshaped for Resurrection into members of His Body the Church. We rejoice with them as dear brothers and sisters. Many of us will seek to renew and refresh the grace of a baptism celebrated years before. For all of us, living water of life and grace will flow from the rock that was His tomb. His own risen Body the Bread that will make us into Him by grace. Jesus’ Yes to the Father now inhabits us through the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ Amen dwells in us and can reshape our hearts and wills every day.
May each of us give Him our six feet or so of clay, body and soul, as gift to be remodeled by Him every day, living witnesses of the purpose and the joy that has found us: “Do not be afraid; go and tell …” others what you have found; “Do not be afraid … You will see Him.”
Most Rev. Stephen A. Hero
Archbishop of Edmonton
St. Joseph’s Basilica
April 4, 2026
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