+In the Name….
Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.
“And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, ‘Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him” (St. Mark 16: 5-6).
My mother died in January 1990 at Rosemont Manor, the nursing facility behind the Rosemont train station, three weeks after I and my family moved into the Rectory in late December, 1989.
I so well remember the day I went to visit her in the nursing home in Ogdensburg, New York where we lived before moving here – a day when I couldn’t find her – in the sense that I was told by one of the nurses that they had wheeled her to a common room along with other residents; but when I went into the room, I couldn’t find her. I went back to the nurse who insisted that my mother was where she had been taken. I went back to the room, and looked one at a time at the old people in their geriatric chairs as they sat in silence, After staring at about twenty of the thirty women in the room, my eyes fell upon my mother who barely looked like my mother. It has been about a week since my last visit because I had been away for a clergy conference. Her physical deterioration as a result of Alzheimer’s had been so incredibly rapid, that I struggled to recognize the face and body of my mother. I went over to her and took hold of her hand, and she looked at me with a vacuous stare, and said nothing to me at all because she longer could speak.
A similar thing happened about two months ago when I had gone to the Murfield building of Waverly Heights in Gladwyne to see Lynn Barrell who was there to recover from a knee replacement. As I walked down the hall to Lynn’s room, my eyes fell upon a name plate outside one of the rooms on the hallway which read “Dorothy Bromley.”
I said to myself, “What is Dorothy doing here? Did she have a fall? Or could Waverly Heights have decided that she couldn’t stay in her lovely apartment any longer because of declining health and mobility?” After I visited Lynn and gave her Communion, I went back to Dorothy’s room, but she was not there. A trip to the nurse’s station informed me that she had been taken down another hallway to the recreation room for a sing-a-long. I went into the room as a volunteer song leader and a volunteer pianist were about to begin a song. Before they did, an old lady said, “Young man, you choose the next song, “and some of the others there chimed in with, “Yes, yes, you choose the song.” Well, I did from the songbook that was handed to me, and even led the singing. I forget now what I chose, because my mind was on finding Dorothy.
It was as Yogi Berra once said, “déjà vu all over again.” I couldn’t find Dorothy amongst the men and women in their wheelchairs positioned in a huge square around the room. She wasn’t there. Or was she? Reclaiming the Ogdensburg discovery method, I looked around the room one person at a time at the face of each of the women in the room. After about eight or nine women, they she was. I stood here motionless, and then began to cry. She looked so different – so old and tiny, and so much less dressed in her classic style. I went over and knelt down next to her. She raised her head slowly and smiled, took my hand and kissed it, and said in a very quiet voice, “I miss you and I love you.” Fortunately, I had learned to always carry Kleenex in my suit pocket.
With my mother and Dorothy, I eventually found the women I was seeking to find. Neither discovery was a pleasant experience, but they both were there.
Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome didn’t find the person they expected to find. Yes, they went to a tomb in a the side of a hill to ritually anoint the dead body of Jesus whom they knew and loved as Lord and Master, and they had given no serious thought as to how they would get into the tomb that was shut with a huge stone, but they expected to find Him. They didn’t. He wasn’t there. But within the tomb on the right side of it was a man (an angel) who told them that they weren’t about to find the One they sought, and that there was no dead body present to be anointed because “He has risen.”
Their expected experience was suddenly transformed in a way beyond expectation so much so that they “fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid.”
Of course “trembling and astonishment had come upon them” for they had stepped into a realm that was totally unexpected and frightening – the Man’s body was gone, another man was in the Tomb (the angel), and they were told something that caused them at this point no exultation, but rather extreme fear. The New English translation says that they were “beside themselves with fear, “and the Jerusalem translation says that “they were frightened out of their wits.”
Well, before the women were frightened and fled from the tomb, three days earlier there had been a group of men (the Apostles) minus Judas the Betrayer and John, the young man among them who were so much “beside themselves with fear” and so “frightened out of their wits” that they ran away from the One who loved them, called them, washed their feet, and entrusted them to continue His mission. They scattered and hid, and the unity they He had forged amongst them was shatterered – until they learned of and experienced the truth of the angel’s declaration within the empty tomb, “He has risen.”
We have no photographs of the Resurrection of Jesus, but we have the tableau of history that without question or a shadow of doubt presents the story of Apostolic courage, power, and effect which had as its only foundation that of the Resurrection.
Peter Kreeft, Boston College professor of philosophy and Christian apologist extraordinaire, writes:
“The existential consequences of the resurrection are incomparable. It is the concrete, factual, empirical proof that : life has hope and meaning; ‘love is stronger than death”; goodness and power are ultimately allies, not enemies; life wins in the end; God has touched us right here where we are and has defeated our last enemy; we are not cosmic orphans, as our modern secular worldview would make us. And these existential consequences of the resurrection can be seen by comparing the disciples before and after. Before, they ran away, denied their Master and huddles behind locked doors in fear and confusion. After, they were transformed from scared rabbits into confident saints, world-changing missionaries, courageous martyrs and joy-filled touring ambassadors for Christ.”
This didn’t happen because of a dead man, or a desire to believe, or holding on to a memory. It happened because Christ won, and because He lives.
Because Christ is risen, we now live with the knowledge of and with the power of the Resurrection. And with such knowledge and power, we (His 21st century disciples) live each and every day echoing the question, the answer, and the direction of St. Paul, whose life was turned upside down and inside out by the Risen Lord,
“O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?.....Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.
+In the Name… |
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