The Resurgence of the Resurrection
“When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go and anoint him. Very early when the sun had risen, on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb. They were saying to one another, ‘Who will roll back the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’ When they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back; it was very large.” (Mark 16:1–3)
Imagine the state of the apostles’ and disciples’ hearts on Easter morning, after the series of preceding days. Just one week prior, they had all gathered to lay down their palm branches in front of Jesus as He processed into Jerusalem as the Messiah. Then, the apostles had their feet washed by Him and they witnessed the institution of the Eucharist, being told to “do this in remembrance of me.” Shortly thereafter, they went to the garden of Gethsemane to pray with Jesus. However, their drowsy prayer was interrupted as their rabbi was arrested by a mob. In the prolonged uproar on Good Friday, many of them hid in fear, as Jesus endured His Passion. Certainly, they eventually received the news of His death that afternoon. Many of them remained in hiding until His appearance in the upper room and the grand commissioning.
In our own lives we too can go through similar situations of confusion and fear. We may have periods of consolation which are quickly followed by tragic turmoil or disorientating desolation. We may feel God’s peace, only for it to be stolen from us as soon as we leave a place of prayer or are confronted by a trial. We may endure long periods of difficulty, which can seem as arduous as the three hours that Jesus hung upon the cross. We may want to cry, “eloi eloi lama sabacthani” along with Him. And, we may continue on in distraught hopelessness, as the apostles and disciples did after seeing the Messiah killed.
Still, how would it feel if, like the women at the tomb, we suddenly looked up and saw the very large stones rolled away from the sepulchers in our own lives and we received word that Jesus had been resurrected in our own hearts? Would we be skeptical, caught off guard, or overjoyed? Would we believe that God could do such things with our complicated circumstances? Would we be unprepared for Him to transform our sorrowful situations? Would we be reassuringly relieved that what He had promised had ultimately come true?
In the Gospel passages following the discovery of the empty tomb, we can see that many of the apostles and disciples did not at first believe. It took apparitions, being called by name, breaking of bread, and even touching Jesus’ wounds for them to understand. So, we should not feel shameful about our initial lack of faith regarding if Jesus can be resurrected in our own lives. However, with the assurance of knowing the entirety of the Easter story, we ought to quickly humble ourselves and profess Him as Lord when we approach the closed off areas of our hearts which He desires to redeem. For, though God is omnipotent enough to act in our lives on His own, He needs us to open ourselves up to Him to allow Him to do so. First, by believing that He has the power to transform our lives and then by asking for Him to be present with us, we give Him permission to resurrect us from the places in which we are entombed.
Additionally, by “resurrection,” sometimes we can believe that God will immediately fix all of the problems in our lives. However, if we have had lived through experiences in which we have prayed to God and He has not immediately improved our situations in the way that we asked, this reality can be disintegrating. Rather, what actually occurs is that God does not always correct our earthly conditions as we wish; instead, He enters into them and transforms them into something better than we could have imagined. In this way, our hearts can be resurrected because even though our circumstances may not change, we can have faith that God makes good of all things.
Interestingly, the word “resurrection” is actually related to the term “resurgence,” which has at its roots a “rising or swelling again.” This calls to my mind the image of a wave surging onto a beach. I imagine the crests rushing forward with the gravitational force of the tide and washing the sand and stones in refreshing waters. Similarly, God wants to resurge into our own lives, with the presence of His living waters. All that we have to do is to let the waves of His love rush into the tombs in our hearts and paddle along with where the current of His divine providence takes us.
So, we ought ask ourselves: What tombs do we have in our own lives? Are they past traumas from hurtful relationships or events or are they recent disappointments of broken dreams or promises? How are we closed off to receiving God’s redemptive graces in those places of our hearts? Rather than running from these burial grounds, we ought to invite Jesus into them, so that He can dwell and be resurrected in them, and us with Him.
