Rejoice! He Is Risen!

Rejoice! He is Risen! Alleluia! Human language is not sufficient, not capacious enough to express the magnitude of the joy that arises in our hearts from the infinite and liberating power of the Resurrection. Light eternal has broken forth from the darkness of the tomb. Christ rises like the sun over the distant horizon, conquering night’s long and terrible darkness. Yes! The long night of our slavery to sin and death has been conquered. Jesus Christ, our long-awaited Savior, is risen! Let our hearts be filled with thanksgiving, let our voices burst into songs of joy and praise. Alleluia! He Is Risen!

When Mary of Magdala went out to visit the tomb on the morning of the third day, her heart was heavy with sorrow, loss, and fear. But she had gone out there because of her deep love for Jesus. What else could she do? It was Jesus who had found her only three years before, battered and broken by life and sunken in the dark depths of her sins. He had come to her not with judgment but with compassion, and out of a love beyond the speaking of it, had touched her, healed her iniquities, and freed her from her enslavement to her former sinful life. Now, alone, standing before the empty tomb, she is overwhelmed with desperation.

She questions a man she thinks is a gardener asking him where he has taken her beloved Jesus: “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him” (Jn. 20: 15). Then, she hears her name: “Mary” (v. 16). The tone and familiarity of the voice strikes her like a clap of thunder. She turns around and cries out, “Rabboni!’ (which means Teacher). Jesus says to her, “Do not hold on to me for I have not yet ascended to the Father… “ (v. 17). With those words, Mary, her heart beating with irrepressible joy, runs back to tell the disciples and tells them breathlessly, “I have seen the Lord…” (v. 18)!

Mary of Magdala stands for all of us who believe, and those who, as yet, do not believe. We share in her our desperate sorrow and incredulity. Jesus, the one that she loved with all of her forgiven heart, was dead. Only two days before, she had witnessed his terrible passion. She had stood below his cross during the long ordeal with Jesus’ mother, Mary, and Mary, the wife of Cleophas. She had heard him say, “It is finished. And, “Father, Into your hands I commend my spirit” (Jn. 19:30, Lk. 23:46). She had helped to take him down from the Cross and to wrap his body with linen cloths and spices, and had seen the stone placed before his tomb. Could she have felt anything that seemed more final than that?

But we see in her, too, our inexpressible joy and hope. For now, on the morning of the third day, she is surprised by wonder and her heart bursts with ineffable joy as she finds herself in the very real presence of Jesus, alive, risen from the dead. Unable to contain her joy, she runs back to where the disciples are and breathlessly tells them what she has seen and heard. In doing so, she becomes the first to tell the Good News of the Resurrection. The things that had been prophesied by all of the prophets over the centuries had, that morning, that auspicious, infinitely momentous morning, been fulfilled.

Today, this new Easter Sunday morning, our Lenten sorrows and penances are turned to joy. What Mary, and later the rest of the disciples, witnessed with their own eyes we know and believe by the grace of God. We celebrate the victory that Jesus won over our greatest enemies, sin and death, once and for all. And now it is we who are commissioned like Mary and the disciples to bring the joy of the Good News to the reality of our times, our own families, and our neighborhoods, indeed, to all we meet. Let us now live our Resurrection-charged joy openly, boldly, and confidently. Let us take up the duties of our discipleship and bring the Good News of the Light of Salvation into the practical realities of our daily lives.

Rejoice! He is Risen! Alleluia!