What Do Our Eyes See Today?
“Easter sets before us the only real possibility a person has of being touched and changed at the depths: a present event”
Simone Riva - The Risen Christ does not compel anyone to believe through irrefutable proof. Today, as then, He appeals — discreetly, always — to our freedom.
No one was present at the moment of the Resurrection. Everyone saw the Risen Christ — but not the act of rising. No one could describe its manner, its impact, the sensation of the most decisive moment in all of history. Christ himself left nothing in writing; one suspects, perhaps, that he wished to avoid the fate common to every author — to be quoted, misunderstood, and in the end betrayed.
What is striking about the Resurrection is the method Jesus chose for making his victorious Presence verifiable. It is captured in the words he addresses to the apostle Thomas: “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (Jn 20:29).
To whom is Jesus referring? Who are those who “have not seen and yet have believed”? Most likely the disciples — and, in particular, John himself. Having received the news of the Resurrection from Mary Magdalene, John runs with Peter to verify the Event in person.
He recounts what happened that morning in his own Gospel: “The two of them ran together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down, saw the linen cloths lying there, but did not go in. Meanwhile, Simon Peter, who was following him, also arrived and entered the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth — which had been on his head — not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a separate place. Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in. He saw and believed” (Jn 20:4–8).
John did not see the Risen Jesus. He was struck, instead, by certain signs of the Resurrection — the burial wrappings left behind, the body gone. Christ’s invitation to Thomas, then, is not a call to blind faith that excuses one from the effort of verification. It is an invitation to open one’s eyes — to recognize the signs of his Presence.
And the signs of the Risen One share a common characteristic across the Easter narratives: they introduce something genuinely new into reality without resorting to the coercion of incontrovertible proofs. They always require the freedom of the observer. Peter himself, standing before the same empty tomb, does not arrive at the same conclusion as John.
In history, the signs of Christ’s Resurrection will no longer be folded burial cloths, empty tombs, or extraordinary manifestations. They will be men and women whose transformed lives simply await recognition at their point of origin — An Event that keeps happening, A Presence that keeps making itself available. Here lies the true challenge of Easter: What do our eyes see today? To what kind of verification have we committed ourselves?
We will always face the temptation to replace God’s method with our own: explanations, quoted texts, speeches, interpretations, narratives. But we sense almost immediately — if we are honest — that we have gone off course, because no method built from words alone is capable of moving a life, except in a formal and moralistic way.
Easter sets before us the only real possibility a person has of being touched and changed at the depths of The I: a present event. A Presence. This, then, is the true content of every greeting we will exchange in these days — that what John saw may also catch our distracted gaze.
