No Stone Big Enough.

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary had quite a story to tell. The tomb was empty! Christ had risen! They were eyewitnesses. And ear witnesses. Not just on that first Easter morning but on Good Friday too. The details of Matthew’s backstory are too rich to miss . . . but the disciples had apparently done just that!

The women would have to tell them about the way of the cross and the crucifixion. Tell them that when Jesus breathed his last, there was a great earthquake. That hours later, Joseph of Arimathea had wrapped Jesus’ lifeless body in linen and laid him in a tomb. That the entrance to the tomb had been sealed with a stone. A huge and heavy stone. That guards were placed there, just in case.

The women, exhausted and spent with grief, would come back to this heavily secured tomb “as the first day of the week was dawning.” This was holy ground, and shaky ground too. As the earth quaked again, the women may have hoped to be swallowed in its depths. This truly was the end of the world as they knew it.

But a new age was dawning. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary watched as an angel rolled back the boulder and used it for an easy chair, making the guards faint with fear. And then this heavenly messenger spoke directly to the women: Do not be afraid. I know you are looking for Jesus, but he is not here. He is risen, just as he said. Come and see for yourselves. And then go—go quickly—and tell the disciples.

When an angel tells you to go quickly, you’d best set out straightaway, exhausted though you may be. And this is where today’s Gospel begins, with two women on a mission for which they must have felt totally unprepared. But then “behold”—O, my God, behold!—Jesus meets them on the way, as he is wont to do. And he speaks directly to them, as he is also wont to do: “Do not be afraid. Go tell my brothers . . .” (Don’t be afraid. Yeah, right!)

Imagine it. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary telling Peter, the Rock, that no stone is big enough to block the risen Christ. That it is impossible to guard the resurrection. That resurrection cannot be contained or exhausted. Imagine these two women in today’s scene in Acts, standing in the crowd fifty days after the resurrection, knowing that their testimony enabled Peter to say, “God raised this Jesus; of this we are all witnesses.” Amen. Let the Church say Amen.

Mary Stommes. Taken from Give Us This Day.

Mary Stommes is an oblate of St. Benedict and editor of Give Us This Day.