The Report

We have received a report. Two thick volumes. Took years to prepare. It recounts the underhanded workings of some seriously evil men. [Spanish]

I have a brother who works as a journalist. Writes for politico.com. He has taken to referring to that report that came out in Washington this week as the “Ferris Bueller Report.”

Not the report I’m talking about.

We have received a report. God started this whole business of human life by putting us in a garden of paradise. We foolishly and brazenly rejected His generosity. The shadow of death then covered the bright sun.

But it is not as if God is not God. By which I mean: Both infinitely powerful and infinitely good. God does not allow evil to despoil His good work–at least not without a plan to bring even greater good out of the evil.

Devil has some tricks up his sleeve. But you cannot outwit God, Who knows all. God may appear to lose a battle to the devil. But God Almighty and all-beautiful does not lose no wars.

We have received a report, dear brothers and sisters. God became one of us, and walked into the capital city. We might think that Washington, D.C., festers like an evil swamp. But they’re having a Boy-Scout conference up there, compared to Jerusalem in 33 AD.

The God-man walked into the brood of vipers, with no weapon of any kind in His Almighty hands. They pounced on Him like piranhas. He bled and died. Almighty God bled and died in our mortal human flesh.

But we have received a report. Not the Ferris Bueller report. The holy and apostolic report.

Volume One awaited fulfillment. St. Peter, St. John, St. Paul; Saints Matthew, Mark, and Luke—they gathered facts and gave us the New and Eternal Volume Two.

He rose from the dead.

They saw the tomb, empty, with the burial cloths neatly folded. Okay. Hmm… Empty tomb of the dead rabbi. Investigation needed here. “They have taken the body of our Lord, and we don’t know where they laid Him…”

“Mary… Cephas… Thomas… Paul… It is I.”

We have received the report. They saw Him. They touched His wounded, resurrected flesh. They ate with Him. They listened to Him some more.

He rose. He won. The all-good, all-beautiful, Almighty God-man does not lose no wars. Not with Satan, not with death and destruction, not with darkness and evil. He did battle with death, and won.

How solid is this report? Did the apostles and martyrs base it on flimsy evidence? Maybe the cynics can explain it all away? Spin it as a lovely myth? File it under “Nice Little Stories” for the weekend edition?

Don’t think so. Too coherent. Multiple witnesses, all eagerly ready and willing to die for the truth of it. And, as we experience through a grand tour of Old Testament passages at the Easter Vigil, Volumes One and Two support and confirm each other.

No, we have received as solid a report as you can receive in this world. We, too, will gladly die for the truth of the holy and apostolic report, if it comes to it. Jesus lives.