Catholic Gospel Reflection: The Apostles' First Apostles | Easter Sunday (Year A)
Can small acts of faith change the world?
On this Easter Sunday 2026, we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ by looking at the "forgotten co-conspirators" of the Paschal Mystery. While the world focused on the powerful, God was working through an underground network of Catholic women, children, and social "nobodies" to make the Resurrection known.
In this episode of Rebel Saints, Nicole Olea dives into the lives of those who stayed when others fled. From the financial support of Joanna and Susanna to the bold witness of Mary Magdalene, we explore why the Catholic Church honors these women as the first apostles to the Apostles.
Inside this Easter Episode:
The Women of Galilee: How their "yes" provided the means for Jesus’ public ministry (Luke 8).
St. Dismas (The Good Thief): A deep dive into the patron saint of "latecomers" and why his plea for mercy is the ultimate Easter message.
Hidden Heroes: The roles of Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and even the boy with the five loaves and two fish.
The Power of Small Fidelities: Why your tithe, your parish volunteering, and your quiet prayers are the "underground network" building the Kingdom today.
Key Scripture & Catholic Teaching Mentioned:
Luke 8: The women who accompanied Jesus.
John 19-20: The Passion and the Empty Tomb.
1 Corinthians 1:26-29: God choosing the weak to shame the strong.
Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC): On the reality of the Resurrection and the Mercy of God.
Topics covered in this episode: Catholic Easter Reflection, St. Dismas and the Good Thief, Women in the Gospel, The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Catholic Women's Ministry, Joseph of Arimathea, Biblical History, Catholic Saints, Mercy of God, and the Paschal Mystery.
A Message for the "Restless Heart": Whether you feel like a "nobody" in the Church or you're a busy parent struggling to raise children in the faith, this episode is for you. Easter proves that no one is too far gone for God’s infinite mercy. Just show up. Say yes.
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Transcript
Edited transcript for readability
Hello, and happy Easter!
He is risen!
Welcome to the Rebel Saints podcast. My name is Nicole, and I am your host.
You know, Easter usually comes at us with those big, beautiful, triumphant moments:
the empty tomb,
the appearances of Jesus,
joy just bursting out of everyone’s pores.
And that’s amazing.
But as I was thinking about what I wanted to talk about today, I started thinking about the people surrounding the events of the Resurrection and throughout Jesus’s public ministry who made the Resurrection story possible.
We always say we would not have had Jesus without Mary’s fiat, without her yes.
But maybe, in a similar way, the Resurrection story would not have unfolded the same way without the people who quietly supported Jesus’s ministry.
The people who kept the movement alive when it looked like everything was collapsing.
That led me to thinking about the people in our own local churches.
I’ve worked or volunteered in churches for most of my adult life, and honestly, most of the people who help churches run are volunteers.
People giving their time.
Their energy.
Their treasure.
And the same was true during Jesus’s ministry.
We are talking about the people who fed Him, housed Him, traveled with Him, stood beside Him at the foot of the Cross, and remained present in the darkness after His crucifixion.
As you read through the Gospels, it becomes clear there was this underground network of people the text barely names:
women,
children,
ordinary people,
people history would normally overlook.
And yet their small, faithful actions created the conditions for everything that followed.
Right at the center of that network was a dying criminal named Saint Dismas, the Good Thief, who in his final breaths shows us why Easter belongs first to people like him.
And once you see how all these lives connect to the Paschal Mystery, it changes how we understand our own place in the story.
What originally got me thinking about this was something my friend Father Ian VanHeusen posted on Facebook last week.
He was comparing something he had written with an AI interpretation of it, but one line he wrote absolutely stopped me in my tracks.
He said:
“The soul participates in God’s eternity.”
And honestly?
That line has been living in my head ever since.
Because it’s true.
All of these people, all these souls, participated in God’s eternity.
They were a motley crew.
A bunch of rebels.
And honestly, it’s beautiful.
If you read the Passion accounts carefully, especially in the Gospel of John, you can actually see a shift happen once Jesus is arrested.
Up until that point, there is momentum:
crowds,
miracles,
teaching,
movement.
In Luke chapter 8, Jesus travels from town to town preaching the Kingdom of God alongside the Twelve.
But Scripture also says some women traveled with Him too:
Mary Magdalene
Joanna, the wife of Chuza
Susanna
many others
And Luke tells us they supported the ministry out of their own means.
Think about what that means in real human terms.
These women were funding the mission.
Just like people volunteer, tithe, and support ministries today, they were helping move the Kingdom forward.
Sometimes we think:
“Well, I don’t have much to offer.”
But the smallest act of generosity can ripple outward in ways we never see.
These women supported Jesus because something had already happened inside them.
They had encountered Him.
And that encounter changed them so deeply they were willing to risk:
their money,
their reputations,
their safety.
Joanna especially stands out to me because she was married into the very power structure that would eventually execute Jesus.
Her support was not theoretical.
It cost her something.
And because she and the others chose to give what they had, the ministry kept moving.
The preaching continued.
Relationships deepened.
And eventually, they remained when others fled.
When the apostles scattered in fear during the Passion, which honestly makes sense because they were human and the danger was real, the women stayed.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all record this.
They stood at the foot of the Cross.
They watched Jesus suffer.
They witnessed His body being taken down.
And their faithfulness at Calvary was the direct continuation of the loyalty they had already shown in Galilee.
Now culturally, this is hugely important.
In the first century, women were not considered reliable public witnesses.
Their testimony did not carry legal authority the way a man’s testimony did.
So if you were inventing a convincing Resurrection story, you would never make women the primary witnesses.
And yet the Gospel writers do exactly that.
Because the Gospel is not structured around what sounds persuasive by worldly standards.
It is structured around what actually happened.
And what actually happened is that the people who remained closest to Jesus in the darkest moment were not the powerful.
They were the faithful.
Then comes the burial.
And there are also men in the story whose actions become absolutely essential.
One is Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council who secretly followed Jesus.
He had influence.
Status.
A reputation to lose.
But after witnessing Christ’s death, something changed in him.
He found the courage to ask Pilate for Jesus’s body and offered his own tomb.
Without him, Jesus’s body could have been discarded like many crucifixion victims were.
Then there is Nicodemus, who first came to Jesus secretly at night in John chapter 3.
After the Crucifixion, he publicly appears carrying burial spices.
Joseph provides the tomb.
Nicodemus provides the spices.
But the women prepare the body and plan to return on Sunday morning.
And because of that decision born from love and fidelity, they become the first witnesses of the Resurrection.
When the stone is rolled away and the angel speaks, they are there.
Their witness reignites the apostles.
And when you put all these pieces together, you begin seeing the pattern.
Their earlier yes led to their yes at the Cross, which led to their yes at the tomb.
And because God chose to reveal the Resurrection first to people the world overlooked, the Church itself is built upon the testimony of the humble.
That is the logic of the Paschal Mystery.
As Saint Paul the Apostle writes in 1 Corinthians, God raises up what is lowly so that no one can boast in their own strength.
And then there are the children.
Have you ever noticed how often Jesus draws attention to them?
Not as decoration.
Not as something cute.
As essential examples of the Kingdom.
In Matthew 19, when the disciples try to push children away, Jesus says:
“Let the little children come to me, for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.”
Why?
Because children receive with trust.
Without calculating status or power.
Think about the little boy in John chapter 6 with the five loaves and two fish.
He does not have influence.
He does not have a plan.
He simply offers what he has.
And that small act becomes the material for a miracle feeding thousands.
Even on Palm Sunday, it is the children shouting “Hosanna!” while the adults negotiate politics and power.
Jesus quotes Psalm 8:
“Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies You have prepared praise.”
Children simply show up and believe.
And honestly?
Maybe we need more of that kind of trust.
Then there’s Simon of Cyrene.
A random man pulled from the crowd to carry the Cross.
One reluctant act of service becomes part of salvation history.
Mark even mentions Simon’s sons, Alexander and Rufus, because the early Church knew the family.
And then there’s the unnamed man carrying the water jug in Mark 14.
No title.
No fame.
No name.
But he guides the disciples to the Upper Room where the Last Supper happens.
Every small act mattered.
The room.
The tomb.
The spices.
The carried Cross.
All of it created the chain leading toward Easter morning.
The underground network was not glamorous.
It was ordinary people saying yes in ordinary moments.
And God used those yeses to change the world.
Then right in the middle of the Crucifixion itself, we meet the most radical member of this network:
the Good Thief.
Tradition calls him Saint Dismas.
In Luke 23, two criminals hang beside Jesus.
One mocks Him:
“Save Yourself and us.”
But the other rebukes him:
“Do you not fear God?”
Then he says:
“We are punished justly. This man has done nothing wrong.”
And finally he turns toward Jesus and says:
“Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.”
And Jesus responds:
“Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.”
That moment is one of the clearest pictures of mercy in all of Scripture.
Dismas has no time left to fix his life.
No time for good works.
No opportunity to rebuild his reputation.
He is guilty.
He admits it openly.
But in his final moments, he recognizes who Jesus is and throws himself upon mercy.
And Christ responds immediately.
Not tomorrow.
Not eventually.
Today.
The Catechism teaches that the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ fulfill all salvation history.
And right there between two thieves, Jesus chooses to die among human failure so no one can ever say mercy is not meant for them.
Tradition even holds a beautiful legend that years earlier, during the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt, Dismas encountered Mary, Joseph, and the Christ Child as a robber on the road.
Something about the face of the infant Jesus moved him, and he allowed them to pass safely.
Then decades later on Calvary, he looked again into those same eyes.
Whether historical or devotional, the truth behind the story remains powerful:
one genuine encounter with Christ can change everything.
Even at the very end.
Dismas did not earn Paradise through perfection.
He received it through trust.
Naked,
bleeding,
dying,
he surrendered himself to the mercy of Christ.
And because God’s mercy is not limited by our timeline or our failures, the first person to enter Paradise with the risen Christ was a condemned criminal.
That is why Easter belongs first to:
the broken,
the failures,
the overlooked,
the sinners who know they need mercy.
Resurrection is not a reward for perfect people.
It is the triumph of mercy.
The underground network shows us that every small act of faithfulness matters.
Dismas shows us it is never too late to say yes.
So during this Easter season, look for the quiet co-conspirators in your own life:
the people whose hidden faithfulness carried you,
the people who showed up,
the people who quietly helped build the Kingdom.
And if you feel like a nobody, remember this:
You are not.
You matter.
You have dignity.
You are beloved by God.
Let’s pray together.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Lord Jesus, thank You for the women who stayed, the children who trusted, and the ordinary people who said yes in hidden ways.
Thank You for Saint Dismas, who reminds us that Your mercy reaches even into our final breath.
Help us join this underground network right where we are with whatever small offering we have.
And when our own last hour comes, let us hear the words You spoke to Dismas:
“Today you will be with Me in Paradise.”
Saint Dismas, pray for us.
He is risen.
And because of that, so can we.
Happy Easter, everyone.
That’s all I’ve got for this episode of Rebel Saints.
If this episode encouraged you, please leave a review, hit follow wherever you listen, and share the episode with someone else.
It genuinely helps the show grow and reach more people.
God bless you.
I love you.
And I’ll see you next time.
I’m Nicole, and this is Rebel Saints:
for restless hearts called to be saints.
Restless hearts, you are welcome here.
