Peter proceeded to speak and said, “You know what has happened all over Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power.

“He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.

“This man God raised on the third day and granted that he be visible, not to all the people, but to us, the witnesses chosen by God in advance, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commissioned us to preach to the people and testify that he is the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness, that everyone who believes in him will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.”

On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.”

So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first; he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in.

When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.

Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed. For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.

The frantic news of Mary Magdalene about the empty tomb stirs Peter to inquire further into the matter. What if some joker had stolen the body of their beloved Master? He runs to the burial place. John, his closest friend in the circle of the Twelve, decides to follow. John sees the empty tomb and believes.

As for Peter, it is not said in the Gospels at what precise moment he believed, but we learn from Luke (24:34) and Paul (1 Cor 15:5) that Jesus appeared to him before appearing to the other apostles—and from then on, his faith never wavered. “They both ran” (v 4).

Peter and John, after hearing the news brought to them by Mary Magdalene, run in haste to the tomb. Let us see what is symbolic in this haste and tension. Are we straining toward the risen and living Jesus? For Peter and John, the tomb represents, since Friday evening, absolute failure. Now here they are running. Are there not in our lives failures which we would be tempted to consider final?

A desire left unfulfilled, an unsuccessful apostolic project, a legitimate happiness ending in failure… Do we have that hope which knows how to perceive in trial, whatever it might be, the power of resurrection belonging to God? We are the disciples of the Risen One. He invites us never to place the seal of despair on anything, but always to hope. Perhaps that which will rise from death will be different from what we expected, but it will be better.