The Mystery of Easter

Alleluia! Christ is risen! What a joyful mystery! We can never tell this story too often.

John’s account of the first risen appearance of Christ is very mysterious and wonderful indeed. In the cool of the morning, Mary Magdalene stands outside the empty cave. John and Peter have left her. Her beloved teacher is dead, she thinks, and his body is gone-- it must have been stolen. He had many enemies. She is not ready to leave just yet, and besides, she is weeping too hard to see very well. (Her vision must certainly have been imperfect, based on what happens next.)

She stoops to look back into the tomb where the linen shroud lies folded in two separate pieces. Why a thief would unwrap the body, she surely cannot fathom. What she sees is “two angels in white,” one by each piece of the cloth. We do not know what they looked like. Maybe they appeared as men, but maybe they were something far more wonderful and terrifying. And they speak to her. “Woman, why are you weeping?” But Mary does not react as if this is strange. She is too distracted by her grief. “They have taken away my Lord,” she says through tears, “and I do not know where they have laid him.”

Mary turns back towards the garden then, not realizing who has just spoken to her. She must not know where to look. And there Mary sees Jesus, just standing there, impossibly alive. How wonderful! But she does not see him. Some have theorized that Christ’s resurrected body had something strange and new about it, so that it appeared different, and he was not recognizable save by his seven holy scars. But he does not leave her in the dark: he begins to speak to her.

“Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?”

Thinking he must be the gardener, Mary begs him to tell her where he has taken the body. Fortunately, he is infinitely patient and kind. He speaks her name, “Mary,” and she finally recognizes him: her teacher, the Resurrection and the Life.

There is something so beautiful about the fact that Christ spoke her name. It is a tender moment of love and grace, Christ revealing himself not in the abstract, not at a distance, but personally to her, Mary. I cannot wait for the day when his voice speaks my name.

Mary’s tears of abandonment turn immediately to wonder, and she finds nothing more natural than to fall to her knees and cling to him. It is hard to imagine the joy she must have felt, to touch even the fabric of his robe!

Can we imagine the resurrection? I am not sure. Again, some theorize that Christ’s body looked very different-- maybe even his voice had a different timbre-- so that Mary could not tell at first that this was the same man she knew before. He can appear in locked rooms now; he can disappear in an instant, as he did at dinner with his companions on the road to Emmaus. St. Paul says that the heavenly bodies we will receive in the Resurrection will be powerful, glorious, and imperishable. Perhaps this glory gave Jesus’s resurrected body (though he is the same Jesus, and it is the same body) a new quality which we cannot really understand until we see it ourselves. But we can imagine the joy. That is ours, today and forever, thanks be to God.

Jesus did not allow Mary to stay and cling to him for long. He instructed her to go to the disciples and tell them what she saw. Even the brief moment of seeing him and reaching out to touch him in the flesh was enough to revive her grieving soul, and motivate her in an instant to run and do his bidding. That moment was so incredibly life-giving, and her joy was now so utterly complete-- how could she do otherwise?

Let us have that same joy in us, as if it were our own names that His living voice had spoken; and let us run swiftly to tell others about the great mysteries we have glimpsed this blessed Easter.