Alliance for Catholic Education
Reflection
Written by Kati Macaluso and Matt Rhodes, ACE Advocates
"On the first day of the week,
Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning,
while it was still dark,
and saw the stone removed from the tomb."
John tells us it is "early in the morning" when Mary Magdalene approaches the tomb - so early, in fact, it is "still dark." These past few days, from Holy Thursday night through the Crucifixion on Good Friday, we have felt that darkness: a friend's betrayal, a savior mocked and tortured, a mother forced to watch her own son killed. Today, though, is Easter Sunday, and we remember that the Christian narrative is one in which all things are possible. Despite the darkness, Mary Magdalene sees, and what she sees is a manifestation of the impossible made possible, for the stone was "removed from the tomb."
The simplicity of John's opening verses might detract from the weight of that stone. Indeed, it's easy to reduce that stone to our own smallness, to lose sight of the reality that the poet John Updike, in his "Seven Stanzas at Easter," admonishes us to remember:
"The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
Not a stone in a story,
But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of
Time will eclipse for each of us
The wide light of day."
This stone that is "removed from the tomb," is "the vast rock" that punctuated the conclusion of Palm Sunday's Passion account with what would seem for any human being an irrevocable finality. It is the stone that, as Matthew tells us, "secured the tomb by fixing a seal." But today, that stone is removed, and we are invited to walk through the opening, and to witness the source of a hope large enough to contain the greatest suffering, betrayal, and darkness imaginable. We are invited to witness the Paschal Mystery.
To witness the Paschal Mystery is not enough, though. In John's Gospel, we learn of our mission as disciples of the Christian faith. We learn we must also bear witness to the Paschal Mystery. Among the varying Gospel accounts of Christ's Resurrection, John's is particularly striking because Christ - the protagonist of the Christian narrative - is not physically present. We, like the disciples, see the "burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered Jesus's head," but we do not see Jesus himself. We might consider that dimension of John's Gospel coincidental, or we might see in it our charge as disciples with hope to bring. Having entered into the empty tomb, Jesus's burial cloths in hand, we become purveyors of the Easter miracle.
For those of you who follow the stories of ACE graduates on the website of the Alliance for Catholic Education, you may have seen this story of what the author, Lauren Kloser, describes as the "excitement" of the Transubstantiation. In it, Katie Biddle, a graduate of ACE Teaching Fellows, describes her first class of second graders, absolutely awe-stricken by the miracle of the Eucharist. She remembers these seven- and eight-year-olds at Mass, whispering in anticipation, "Is it Jesus now, Miss? How about now? In this moment? Is Jesus here yet?" She recalls the importance of the moment not being lost upon these second-graders, who - at the moment of the Eucharistic miracle - "smiled at each other," giving each other "an enthusiastic thumbs up."
Most profound, perhaps, is her recollection of one student's question afterwards: "Why doesn't someone tell all the people?" This question is one that stopped Katie in her tracks:
"He was right-the moment might be somber and holy, but where was the excitement? Where was the wonder and awe at the amazing miracle in which bread becomes the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ? Had we grown indifferent to the mystery of the Eucharist?"
Today is Easter Sunday. It is the day we come face-to-face with the mystery of Christ's Resurrection. The stone has been removed from the tomb. So we do as Mary Magdalene does: We walk through the passage where the stone once stood. We marvel at the fact that Christ has conquered sin and death, and we do what a second-grader, in his child-like wisdom, knows to be the imperative next step: We go and "tell all the people."
And when we go and tell all the people, when we bear witness to this hope of Easter, let us again heed the advice of John Updike:
"Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed
By the miracle..."
Let us call Easter what it is - a miracle. And let us be the Resurrection people that we are.