Jn 20:1-9 (Evening Mass: Lk 24:13-35)
1On 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. 2So 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.” 3So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb. 4They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first; 5he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in.
6When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, 7and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place. 8Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed. 9For they did not yet understand the scripture that he had to rise from the dead.
To see with the eyes of the heart: The oft-quoted saying, “To see is to believe,” exalts sensory perception as the guarantor of truth. But today, with the growing popularity of virtual realities and of the cyberworld, physical seeing can no longer be considered as the touchstone of credibility. Computer technology can now simulate, exaggerate, enhance, or distort reality, and thus deceive the human eye. It has exposed the lie in equating seeing with believing. For the physical eyes can see only the surface, but cannot plumb the depths where essential truth lies. Truth is beyond the grasp of the senses, and believing cannot be the fruit of sheer physical seeing. Faith and believing are the domain of the heart. For the Hebrews, the heart is not a blind and wanton generator of emotions. Rather, it is the seat of discernment and decisions. It is here that believing takes place and faith is born. In Saint-Exupery’s masterpiece, The Little Prince, the fox shows a profound grasp of this reality as he reveals to his friend, the Little Prince, his secret: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eyes.”
It is in the light of this preliminary consideration that we want to understand the meaning of Easter Sunday and of the episode that we read in today’s Gospel.
The resurrection of Jesus, the event that undergirds our Christian faith, would make little sense to one who continues to subscribe to the saying that “seeing is believing.” For no human eye has been privileged to witness Jesus rising from the tomb. In today’s Gospel, what Mary Magdalene, Peter, and the beloved disciple witness are only telltale signs—the empty tomb and the burial wrappings.
The risen Jesus himself does not appear in this Gospel episode. The story has an interesting twist which must never be missed. While Mary Magdalene, Peter, and the beloved disciple share the same sensory experience, the gospel writer singles out the beloved disciple as the one who comes to believe: “He saw and believed” (Jn 20:8). And as if to highlight this instance of coming to faith, the gospel writer follows up the statement with a side comment: “They did not as yet understand the Scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead.”
The implication is that the beloved disciple comes to believe in the resurrection of Jesus even in the darkness of incomprehension, when the only flicker of light that illumines him are the signs of the empty tomb and the burial wrappings. But seen through the eyes of a heart sensitized by the experience of the Master’s love, the signs suffice for him to grasp the truth that the Master is alive. Yes, love begets faith—a faith that precedes intellectual understanding and sees through the darkness of reason.
Without having to speculate about the identity of this beloved disciple, we can simply say that he is one who knows how to acknowledge his very personal experience of the love of Jesus, and that experience so marks him that it becomes a personal title by which others can identify him. The love that he has experienced from Jesus has opened the eyes of his heart to see beyond the surface of things and to recognize the essential truth even before the mind could grasp its full meaning.