With Jesus risen and back for forty days I bet Our Lady could hardly stop cooking and bringing him food, watching him eat. It was probably hard not to hug him every minute. I bet she kept looking in on him when he was asleep, draping him in too many blankets because she was so happy to bring them and cover him up again. Let’s tend to Jesus like that too. Let’s treasure him and peek in at him and bring him things and wait for a moment we can hug him again and have a look at those wounds, kissing them many many times.
Some types of darkness are so complete I wonder what I was calling darkness before. Fiddling with the scree at the bottom of the cave floor I am sitting on, my hand bumps into the most unlikely thing in the world… flowers? They are not dried flowers but living ones. I can feel their soft petals. I sense him smiling in the dark.
“What are we doing?” I ask Jesus. He doesn’t say anything so I take his cue and don’t say anything either.
It never occurred to me that the Risen Lord might have wanted to sit and reflect before he came out of the tomb but it makes sense. Before I take a big step that turns the world upside down that is what I do too.
And then I think that it would have been possible for him not to tell anyone that he had risen from the dead. He could have just done it in the secret of the tomb and ascended without an audience. The victory would still have been won. But Jesus isn’t like that. He wants to bring us all in, share everything with us. He wants us to choose him and engage with him in life. Even the work of bringing all the world in on this most mind boggling gift he doesn’t keep to himself.
He wants us to share in the power flowing from his resurrection and to shine out for everyone.
He wanted us to know what he was doing for us not when we got to Heaven but right away, and to act on it in this life.
I wonder what he is thinking about over there.
I want to be closer to him so I start edging toward where I think I may have heard him scratching around. I keep bumping into waxy plants of some kind. Going over them with my hands I realize they are lilies. They smell like lilies; that mild, sweet fragrance they have.
“What are you thinking about?” I ask him. “Everything,” he says, and I am at his side.
“Things that have happened? Things that will happen?” I ask.
He chuckles which makes me laugh too, so glad to be in this moment with him.
We stand together and I do my best to follow him. It must be time.
We pause and I feel a roundish jagged rock in front of me. It is so strange that it is covered with a wild tangle of roses. I know they are roses because of their beautiful and unmistakable scent.
I never know what is going to happen around him but I do know it will always be life, life and more life!
I am almost giggling thinking of how surprised Mary Magdalene is going to be when she sees him. I am so happy I will get to see this.
“Are you ready?” he asks. “This is where things get really crazy.”.
I don’t know what to say. Why is he asking me if I’m ready?
“I’ve been waiting for you, Lord.” I say.
“For me?” he asks.
Something about the way he says it causes my understanding to shift. With amazement I realize this is my tomb, not his. It is I who am about to rise with him and go out from here as something or someone I am not sure I will recognize. Also he said things were about to get crazy so … I hesitate.
He seems to think this is great fun however, and I can’t help but be infected with his joyous excitement; his happiness because he loves me and he came that I might live, and live to the full and forever with him.
I embrace Jesus and I tell him I am ready. We step back and we count together, “1…. 2….3!”
And what about you?
Hey, COME OUT OF THERE!
“Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Ephesians 5:14
When I wake up on Easter morning what I usually feel is happy for Jesus. He is the first person I say “Happy Easter” to. Happy Easter, Beloved Lord. You win!
Love is stronger than death, oh Love Itsef!
Then I think of the Church all over the world and how we are all together in spirit, experiencing this day that is not just a remebrance of the past, but something happening now, a special time of grace from Heaven as we all celebrate together.
Then I think of all the people I miss, especially my family that have died, and I am so grateful I will see them again because of this Lord who accomlished it.
Granted this has been the strangest Easter in any of our lifetimes, but that’s another thing about Easter. Jesus is unstoppable.
I had a good enough day, and was able to pray with my youngest daughter and her four year old in our traditional way. I heard from my eldest daughter, and my friends too. I have had time to pray and reflect and listen to music that is special to me at Easter. It was sad to be away from mass and that is an understatement. I am sure you can understand too.
It was a quiet day, and pretty outside. I blew bubbles on the back porch with my granddaughter, a sweet way to end the day.
And now my place is quiet again. I think about how this is the time maybe the disciples settled down enough they could just enjoy Jesus.
All day he was playing hide and seek, surprising different disciples in different places and in different, wonderful ways, all of them crazy. It had been an overwhelming day, a world inside out day.
They had laughed and cried and screamed, tried to understand and experience impossible things and some couldn’t even believe their own eyes. It was too astonishing.
All that was settled now, and they said, “Stay with us Lord, for evening draws near.”
They got to be with him for 40 more undoubtedly beautiful days.
It must have been hard to stop looking at him, hard to stop hugging him, hard to calm down and just be with him. Maybe it was easier in the glow of the fire to relax in his presence, to enjoy his tenderness and love for them.
To me the signature of the touch of the Lord is tenderness. This is something I am deeply grateful for today.
Sometimes I don’t emotionally identify with Easter that much. My life feels like a long Holy Saturday after several Good Fridays. I’m not complaining. I want to say that I am aware that I possess a much deeper joy than emotional happiness, though I would say I am happy enough, even after all the losses. I have been aware of this joy through it all, not to say I haven’t been desolate because I have. It’s the joy of that rock solid knowledge of God all the way to the center of my soul. I don’t think I would have that if I hadn’t gone through hell so many times; emotional hell, and spiritual desolation.
“My one companion is darkness,” the Psalmist wrote (Psalm 81.) In some ways this is still true, my soul cleared of so many things that filled it. But there is something beyond that emptiness. That something is what I am made of now. The darkness has a radience to it. I lost all the lushness of my spirituality and gained infinitely more. Maybe the disciples found something in their own souls similar after the Ascension.
Carl Jung, asked if he believed in God, said, “No.”
And then he added, “I don’t believe, I KNOW.”
I can identify with that.
I don’t believe in the Resurrection. I know. And that’s a gift of the Resurrection itself, of the power flowing from it.
Even when I don’t necessarily “feel” God I just know and that’s enough for me.
When I do sense his presence, that tenderness I also know as his sign. I hope he feels my tenderness too.
Jesus said, “I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you.” (John 14:18)
For me Holy Saturday is usually a quiet, meditative day spent with Mary.
Normally the parish church would be open, but quiet and bare. Catechumen and Candidates would be gathering for Morning Prayer with their teacher, their sponsors perhaps, and the pastor. The feeling would be somber and expectant too, this last gathering before the class would be baptized and/ or confirmed at the Easter Vigil.
Mary seemed to sail through Great Silence like a sparrow released into a moonless night. The others watched her closely for signs of life and awareness, but her heart was fully awake.
“Mother, please,” Magdalene said, “Have something to drink. For me.” Her sisters had brought breakfast. Something hot and steaming was pressed gently into her hand. The cup warmed her fingers. She looked at the tear stained faces and worried eyes around her and took a small sip. She felt the weave of the mat she sat on, the movement of air, the stillness of earth.
The room filled with the others who also sat. As the strips of light from the shutters moved across the floor, no one spoke.
The cup grew cold.
At home I keep my little apartment quiet except for playing some Marian chant now and then. I pray the Hours too.
Our family altar is bare as well.
The door is open.
For you, my God, my soul in stillness waits. Truly my hope is in you.
(See Psalm 95/Catholic Hymn “My Soul in Stillness Waits” by Marty Haugin)
It’s been a stressful day. But we are here together at Hensel Park. I played here when I was little. My daughters played here growing up. Now Arelani does, too. She considers it “her” park. I brought her even though it is the hottest part of the day in the hottest part of a Texas summer.
I am anxious and worried about many things. So it takes a special effort to make consistent eye contact with her, to respond to what she says, to play with her attentively, given the stresses of the day.
I have learned from the practice of inner prayer how to bring myself back again and again gently each time I am distracted by a wayward thought about this or that.
After a while this practice with Lani becomes easy. I realize I feel peaceful in a similar way I do when I am grounded in prayer.
Time seems to flow back into itself like the tide drawing away, leaving its treasures on the beach.
The cicadas chant in the trees around us. A hot wind lifts her curly black hair, a curtain pulled away from her face – a face unbelievably pretty- sweeter than any Disney princess. The conversation is simple (she’s three,) and tender, her black eyes wide, soft and steady. We smile at each other in a timeless moment. She reaches over and clears my tousled hair from my face. Peering at me closely,she seems lovingly amused.
She crosses a little bridge, turning to beckon to me, “Come on, Granny, this way.”
It strikes me that she is the Christ Child or maybe the little Child Mary leading the way for me; to love, to hope, to the Kingdom where the littlest are the brightest of all.
The idea we can love Jesus in others, or learn to love others by seeing Christ in them may sound impersonal at first. But Arelani never seemed more herself to me than when I saw her as having the Little One inside her. I was seeing the truth of her, her “Arelani-ness” itself. Are we not each part of the Body of Christ? When someone sees the Lord in us, is that not only the simple truth? It does not make us less personally loved, but more so when the Lord of Love who is truly within us is experienced by another person.
We slide down the slide, we swing. We sing in the pavilion that echoes, run in circles for fun, watch ants. I take a picture of her running through a field of yellow flowers; a little kid in overalls and tee shirt, wild hair flying. She’s excited and she looks back to yell, “I yuv you, Granny!”
“I love you too, Pooh,” I say as I clump along behind her.
Later she picks a few flowers for her mama. She gets lost in the lovely details of one of these, touching each petal in awe. She sits down with it. Nothing else exists to her.
Time is a gift we can open and make holy by attentiveness. This is the “sacrament of the present moment.” * This is God with us. This is the first commandment and the second also.
Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:36-40)
In no way do I intend to present any other idea about the life of St. Mary Magdalene, but that which the Catholic Church believes and teaches about her through Scripture and Tradition. (See http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09761a.htm for a history of the Church’s thought on St. M.M., “Apostolora Apostolorum” Apostle to the Apostles)
Bethany Hang Out 