Acts 10:34a, 37-43 | Ps 118 | Col 3:1-4 | Sequence victimae paschali laudes | Jn 20:1-9
On Easter, we sing a question. What’s referred to as the Easter Sequence (before the proclamation of the Gospel) the sequence has us pleading: “Mary, speak, declare to us what you saw while on your way!” We fervently ask our sister Mary of Magdala to share with us the Good News. Despite our belief, we do not yet understand. For grief remains; loss remains; even death remains. The newness of the resurrection is not always evident in the reality of our lives. So ever more urgently we implore: “Mary, speak!”
Mary’s reply is perhaps unsettling in its indirectness. In this part of the story, she has not yet seen Christ, and the sights and sounds of the resurrection are odd and mysterious: Mary has seen an empty tomb; burial cloths deprived of a body; and an angel making absurd, unbelievable claims. Mary sees the glory of Jesus’ resurrection only in the form of these small clues. Likewise, we don’t see Jesus in our gospel today. We are, instead, left with Mary to piece together the clues. (It’s kind of like Netflix, you have to binge-watch these next 50 days to get the whole story). After her first experience of the empty tomb, she tells Peter that someone has taken the body. She doesn’t begin to grasp the truth; perhaps she can’t dare to believe it.
And who would? God is doing something that has never been done before. This lends itself not to immediate joy but first to confusion, even if we feel a dawning hope. We very often do not understand that which we believe. With Mary of Magdala, we gaze today into an empty tomb, a place of death. It does not immediately suggest to us that it has radically changed into a place of new life. We must train our eyes to see.
For some of us, training our eyes to see hints of the resurrection will come easily. The delights of springtime and the joy of relationship remind us continually of God’s renewing and life-giving work. But some of us are trapped in longer winters, in longer Lents. Sometimes we look at the empty tomb and see nothing but a void. Some of us aren’t ready for the celebration of Easter, but today dawns whether or not we’re ready.
Christ’s resurrection is complete, but ours is only begun. We have yet to go where he has gone. We know how Christ’s story ends, but we are still living out our own. It takes an enormous act of trust to believe that God will complete this good work begun in Jesus. In Christ’s resurrection, we have only a preview of what awaits—but a preview, nonetheless. For here in the tomb, where we expect only death, signs of Christ await us. The resurrection is present only in suggestive clues—but it is present. The clues are all around us—subtle, hidden, indirect—but always present.
In today’s gospel, Mary of Magdala and the other apostles see only hints of the resurrection. She is left for now to put the pieces together for herself.
And yet, our sequence puts the most confident words in her mouth: “Yes, Christ my hope is arisen!” In the midst of loss and confusion, Mary still witnesses to what she has seen. She picks up the pieces of resurrection around her. She declares the truth of life to us.
Like Mary, we are called today to look around us for clues of the resurrection. Even all these years later, the Church is still at work piecing together these clues. Easter invites us to train our eyes so that we see the empty tomb not as a void but as a promise. Our understanding is still unfolding. And even as it unfolds, Easter demands that we serve as witnesses to what we have seen. As we ask Mary of Magdala to witness, so we as Church declare confidently with her: “Yes Christ, my hope, is arisen.”
On Easter, we sing. We sing through the sorrows of this life. We sing as pilgrims on a journey, a journey of constantly discovering the resurrection anew. Our “Alleluia” echoes in the darkest of nights. It warms cold walls and fills empty spaces. Our song draws us ever more deeply into the mystery of the resurrection. As we journey, we can declare ever more confidently:
“Yes, Christ, our hope, is arisen!”