“Christ our Passover is sacrificed. Alleluia.”
Readings:
- 1 Corinthians 5:7–8: “Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new paste, as you are unleavened. For Christ our Pasch is sacrificed. Therefore, let us feast: not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness: but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
- Mark 16:1–7: The women go to anoint Jesus, find the stone rolled away, and are told: “He is risen; He is not here. Behold the place where they laid Him.”
✠ The Empty Tomb and the New Leaven of Life ✠
On this radiant morning of the Resurrection, we behold both a tomb that is empty and hearts that are to be made new. The Holy Apostle Paul exhorts us in his letter to the Corinthians to “purge out the old leaven”—an image that would have resounded in the ears of any Jewish Christian, familiar with the Passover rites where all leaven (a symbol of corruption and pride) was to be cast out.
Saint John Chrysostom, commenting on this very passage, notes:
“The leaven is evil doctrine and a corrupt life. If the old leaven remains, the whole mass is infected. But you are unleavened now, through the Paschal Sacrifice of Christ, who has made you clean.” (Homilies on 1 Corinthians, Homily 15)
In the Resurrection, the Church rejoices not in mere symbols but in the living Christ, who is Himself the true Pasch—the Lamb slain and now risen. The old leaven—of sin, bitterness, duplicity—is cast out, that we might be a new dough, raised not by the puffing up of pride, but by the humility and purity wrought by grace.
This is what the women at the tomb are invited into. In Mark 16, they approach with spices, still thinking in the realm of death. But the angel tells them, “He is risen. He is not here.” The dead no longer dwell among the living. Something wholly new has begun.
Saint Gregory the Great, marveling at the significance of the women finding the stone rolled away, writes:
“The stone had been placed over the mouth of the tomb to hold the body of the Lord; but He who was shut in rose again. He did not need the stone to be rolled away, but it was rolled away to show to others that He was already risen.” (Homilies on the Gospels, II.24)
The empty tomb is not a puzzle but a proclamation. It is the divine exclamation point on the Paschal Mystery: death is defeated, and Christ has begun the new creation. The angel’s commission, “go, tell His disciples…”, mirrors Paul’s admonition: let us keep the feast—not as before, but in the purity of sincerity and truth.
✠ Living the Feast ✠
What does it mean to “keep the feast” in sincerity and truth?
Saint Leo the Great exhorts the faithful in his Easter sermon:
“Let us then lay aside the old leaven of our former nature, and partake of the Lord’s Pasch in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Let our minds be raised from earthly things, and let us fix our gaze on heavenly realities.” (Sermon 71 on the Lord’s Resurrection)
The Resurrection is not only an event we commemorate—it is a reality we live. In the traditional Roman rite, the glorious strains of the Exsultet proclaim the “happy fault” of Adam that merited so great a Redeemer. Now we are summoned to walk in newness of life, as “unleavened”—undefiled by malice, emptied of vainglory, and filled with the leaven of divine charity.
In the ancient Roman liturgy, today’s Mass opens with the jubilant Introit: Resurrexi, et adhuc tecum sum, alleluia—“I have risen, and I am still with you.” Christ risen is not Christ absent. He is present to the Church, in her sacraments, in the sacred liturgy, in the mystical life of the soul.
✠ Let Us Then Feast ✠
Dear soul, on this day of days, cast out the old leaven—anger, impurity, worldliness—and receive Christ, the true Pasch. Let the angel’s message to the women be God’s message to you: “He is risen!”—and that means you, too, must rise: in your thoughts, in your desires, in your very manner of living.
As St. Ambrose declares:
“Christ has died for you; now you must live for Him. He has risen; rise with Him.” (On the Mysteries, 53)
Let us celebrate this feast, not only in our churches, but in our hearts—eternal Pasch, carried forward each day in the life of grace.
Christus resurrexit, alleluia. Vere resurrexit, alleluia.