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Reflection from Fr. John on the Easter Gospel Matthew 28:1-10

A stay at home Easter is not the same:

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary did not stay at home. They went to the tomb. Mt. tells us that “it was the first day of the week.”

This Feast is meant to be first in our lives and the lives of all Christians. But for most of us, it’s the first Easter we did not go to church and so, we experience the loss of a sense of time.

As one parishioner told me, when he wakes he has to ask his wife what day of the week it is?

Sunday, the first day of the week, gives us a sense of time. It’s meant to be Sabbath time, but we’ve lost that during the time of this Pandemic.

C. Thurman wrote, “It hardly matters what day it is any more, since the future is so unclear.”

For those who are not going to work, not going to school, it hardly matters what day it is anymore. All days seem the same. There is no sense of “the First Day of the Week,’ no sense of Easter time. The future is so unclear. We wonder if we will ever get back to a normal time.

The angel tells the women that Jesus has been raised from the dead. For the followers of Jesus, nothing will be the same again. Their lives forever changed, much like us on this Easter. Our lives will never be the same again after this Pandemic.

Easter though proclaims to us that something is different on the other side of death. It tells us that we can be different on this side of death and on the other side of our death. Life can and will be different if we allow the Risen Lord to touch our hearts.

For, as the Greek Orthodox believe, the human heart is the organ that sees God. Our hearts enable us to see beyond the sickness and death of this crisis, to see God in the midst of this, to see the hope and promise of new life.

For it wasn’t just the tomb that was opened that First Day of the week, but the hearts of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. The angel said to the women, “Come and see.” He was inviting them to open their hearts to see beyond the fear.

At a time when we are told to wear masks, we know only too well how our fear can mask our hope. And so this Easter, like the angel, calls us to see hope in the midst of this Pandemic.

The monk Thomas Merton wrote, “I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me.”

It’s hard for health care workers, those out of work to see the road ahead, for anyone of us to see how life will be different on the other side of so much sickness and death, to see beyond tombs today that are not empty.

There’s a woman who has a prayer taped above her kitchen sink that says, “God meets us where we are.” As she washes dishes and we wash our hands, we need to remember that the Risen Lord meets us where we are.

The Risen Christ met the women on their way to Galilee. The promise of Easter is that we will meet Him wherever we are if, as C. Thurman writes, “Our hearts are open to the unexpected.”

The Jesuit priest Greg Boyle tells the story of being on the way in his parish walking and seeing an 11 year old boy from the neighborhood who had a speech impediment. When he spoke you felt like you were being sprinkled by the priest at Easter morning mass.

Boyle was glad he was across the street when he called out, “Hey Pepe, what cha got there?” Pepe was holding a plastic bag filled with water and holding it high like an Olympic Trophy. “What’s cha got there?” Pepe who mixed up his c’s, z’s, & s’s when he spoke responded, “Fishishes.” What he had was a little gold fish in a plastic bag of water.

But when Pepe spoke, he spoke with such infectious joy that Boyle couldn’t help but catch it.

Mt. tells us that the women at the tomb had not yet caught infectious joy. Their joy was tempered by fear at the angel’s announcement.

This Crisis and the order to stay at home this Easter can rob us of some of our joy.

But infectious joy is what we must be spreading, much like the African American woman in a nursing home. She’s 100 years old and always smiling. She reminds us that even when our world shrinks, we can give witness to the Risen Christ thru infectious joy which can expand our horizons and the horizons of others by giving them hope.

There was a man who was being tested for the virus. He told the people, “All I have in my system is hope. I will test positive for that.”

That’s what we need to test positive for during this Pandemic—Easter hope.

The poet Mary Oliver gives us instructions for discovering hope and joy in her “Instructions for life:” She says, “Pay attention, Be astonished.”

That’s why we have 50 days of Easter—for paying attention and being astonished. One day is not enough to take in the miracle of an empty tomb and a Risen wounded Savior.

For Easter, as John Shea reminds us is not just “how to live, but how to live again and again, and again.”

That thought can put an Alleluia in our heart.