Daily Gospel Reflection for April 13, 2020

Today's Gospel: Matthew 28:8-15

Then they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, telling them, "You are to say, 'His disciples came by night and stole him while we were asleep.'" Matthew 28:12-13

After reading a plethora of books about Hitler's atrocities, going to the Holocaust museum, and visiting Dachau itself, I was shocked to hear that some people believe the Holocaust never happened. Imagine people being so desperate to forget a part of history that they erase it altogether! Sadly, a good portion of us are guilty of the same thing. Without even realizing it, we alter small details in the retelling of things to deflect the blame: Our husband insulted us first so it was only fair to lash out at him. Our friend never told us to keep her news a secret and has no right to be angry. We were perfectly clear with our kids about our expectations. Shame on them for not meeting them! We repeat these statements over and over again until we believe the new versions we've created, oblivious that we deleted the fact that our husband never insulted us first, our friend actually did ask us to keep her confidence, and we were all over the map with our kids, leaving them clueless as to what we wanted. They're small revisions, created to defend and protect ourselves. Yet, these small pebbles tossed out eventually ripple into large breaches of trust in our relationships. The chief priests and elders were threatened by Christ rising from the dead. Consequently, they revised the story, telling the guards to say the disciples had taken Jesus' body. Desperate to defend and protect themselves, the guards jumped at the lie, and the large sum of money that came with it. That one small deception rippled out, keeping countless numbers of people from believing in Christ. In the past two thousand years, there's never been such revisionist history with as much collateral damage as this.