Matthew 28 1:10, Easter Vigil

Emptiness is often not a good word for us, is it, sisters and brothers? Emptiness is not exactly where we want to stay for too long, if at all. Emptiness is scary. It evokes loneliness, separation, loss. When I came here for college, my mom in Davao couldn’t enter my room for two years. I left a lot of stuff in there. But she could only see emptiness that she couldn’t stand. Seven years later, when I finally joined the Jesuits after teaching in Davao, kuya wrote me the saddest Christmas card that said: “Your place at the table is now vacant, ‘Nel. We will miss you on Christmas Eve.” It was my turn to have a dose of that when I was a formator in San Jose Seminary. I dreaded semestral and summer breaks when the seminarians couldn’t get out of there fast enough, because I’d be the only soul left in the 4-storey St Ignatius Building from sunset to sunset. Funny, I was never really scared I’d see the mother and child ghosts that supposedly haunted that building, as people said they did. No; it was coming home to a dark, empty place that I couldn’t stand.

I’m sure you’ve had your own brushes with emptiness, sisters and brothers: like that chair where daddy used to sit and watch TV; that bed where ate used to dump all her books after school; that dining room…after you’ve married off all the kids. Yeah, we eventually learn to live through the emptiness. Kasi lahat naman ng bagay nakakasanayan kahit mahirap. But something within us still militates against it. And for good reason. My theory is, deep in the Christian psyche, we know God created us all ex nihilo, out of nothing. And we spend a good deal of life energy warding off any return to nihilo, to any kind of nothing, to emptiness. Horror vacui, it’s called. The dread of emptiness.

Now the empty tomb…that was quite a different story. The two Marys found it gaping wide open. But it announced something quite astonishing: that Jesus had already left it. He was no longer there. He was gone. Notice what the messenger said? “Come and see the place where he lay.” He invited the two Marys to lean into the emptiness, not to avoid it; to peer into the darkness, not to look away, from where there was now nobody. In other words, on the first Easter morning, Jesus’ empty tomb turned from a hole shut in with tragedy, to a window flung open to eternity. Grief walked in at sunset. Joy walked out at dawn.

If you think about it, sisters and brothers, not all emptiness is such a bad thing, after all. And this is not strange to us. We just don’t think of it all the time. We’ve actually had experiences of happy emptiness. Whenever our parents cooked our favorite food, for example, they were only too thrilled when we polished off our plates, with the kalderos and kaserolas so much easier to wash, kasi ubos! Basyo. Outside Mercury Drug, just across Ateneo, nothing makes Kuya Uping merrier than going home with an empty bilao, after selling away all his banana cue, lumpia, and carioca in a day’s lako. And what about that bedroom at home, which you turned into a mini-hospital for the long, painful illness of the beloved? When they fully recovered and moved out—or when they mercifully passed—the room felt less and less like a loss, and more and more like exhaled breath. You didn’t quite have the words for it, but this emptiness was mercy. This emptiness was grace. Or naranasan n’yo na ba ‘yung magtanim ng malalim na sama ng loob, kasi sinaktan kayo ng pagkasama-sama? After several years of making good your life despite your wounds, bigla mong nakita uli ‘yung hinayupak na nakasakit sa ‘yo. But wonder of wonders, you weren’t triggered anymore. ‘Yung…wala lang. Wala na. Oh, you didn’t throw yourself into the person’s arms para mag-Dawn-Zulueta kayo sa tabing-dagat. But you were able to honestly say, and with great self-surprise, “Hmmm. Okay na ako. I’m really okay.”

Sisters and brothers, because Jesus rose from the dead, his Resurrection gave emptiness a different grammar. Without the all-encompassing power of the Resurrection, all our emptiness would’ve always stayed dreadful. Thanks to the Resurrection, when cruelty and death did not have the last say—our emptiness today is not always a subtraction, but also a completion. Not always a failure, but an accomplishment. Not always sign of dearth, but a sign of fullness and grace. Thanks to God raising His Son back to life, not all our emptiness is a shadow that loss and defeat leave behind. Emptiness can also become the signature of victory and new life. On Good Friday, Jesus’ tomb was dark with death. On Easter, his empty tomb caught the first light of dawn.

But God is not finished with us yet, sisters and brothers. We have yet to see the fullest power of the Resurrection. And when that happens, we hope we all live to see the day when prisons, rehab centers, sanatariums are all empty, and also dialysis centers, cancer wards, emergency rooms, & hospitals. In the fullest power of the Resurrection, we hope to finally see God shake hollow our guns and missiles, our military camps and war rooms. We hope to see the day when our world will be empty of Trumps, Netanyahus, and Khameneis, and the graves they’ve dug, especially shallow graves, will just be holes on the ground, and nothing more.

Sisters and brothers, Jesus’ Resurrection tells us that there is nowhere in the universe outside of us and nowhere in the universe inside of us, that is not already filled with God’s life and God’s light. It is only us who despair over divine absence. But even in our despair, God is already there. We know this and believe this. We just read and sang of it all from the prophets & the psalms.

So we go, sisters and brothers. Go with our empty plates and our empty bilaos and the empty rooms in our hearts. Because tonight, of all nights, we’ve read and sung and remembered once again, that the emptiest places in our lives were never really empty at all. They were Risen Jesus making room, so he can fill them with Himself. Emptiness need not be dreadful, sisters and brothers. God has often made it a favorite place to begin again…and again…and again.

*image from the Internet