“While it was still dark” Mary Magdala comes to the tomb in a garden, just a few footsteps away from where Jesus was crucified. Good Friday’s gloom is still thick in the air. But she, Peter and John encounter something totally unexpected: the stone rolled away, the tomb empty, the burial clothes neatly folded. Not the chicanery of grave robbers, but what is it?
Unprecedented! Incomprehensible! Inexplicable! Just as the light of a new day dawns, so does their understanding. Slowly, silently, Jesus’ predictions about “rising from the dead” water their withered hopes.
Resurrection is just too much to take in all at once. Faith is so often like this. There’s an occasional big bang, but most often it’s slow growth, just like in nature. First tiny shoots peek through the ground, then full stalks, young buds, and only then the full flowering of faith. This story of joy is just beginning to dawn.
—J. Michael Sparough, S.J. is a Retreat Master and Spiritual Director at the Bellarmine Jesuit Retreat House outside Chicago. He blogs weekly at www.heartoheart.org/Lent