Friends, today we celebrate the feast of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist. St. John is, of course, a spiritual master, but he is a literary master as well. We can see his skill throughout his Gospel, but perhaps especially in the stories dealing with the resurrected Jesus. We can find them in the twentieth and twenty-first chapters of his Gospel. Our passage for today is from chapter twenty, and it contains, in short compass, the whole of Christianity, if we have the eyes to see it.
“On the first day of the week.” Easter Sunday is the new creation day. On the first creation day, God had said, “Let there be light,” and now, on Easter day, the one who said “I am the light of the world” has returned from the dead. And this means that everything has changed, and everything has been recreated.