Pastor’s Notes

THAT STONE!

In Matthew’s Resurrection story, some women closest to Jesus hurried to the tomb in the early morning to anoint his body.  They knew that a very large stone had been rolled across the entrance to the tomb, blocking their mission. Sometimes weighing a ton or more, a chiseled stone was rolled into a groove across a tomb’s entrance.  Such a stone was far too heavy for anyone let alone those Easter morn women to lift or roll aside…yet they kept going.  WHO WILL ROLL AWAY THE STONE? They had no options, but they went along anyway, hoping for some break.

The stories heard in the Easter Vigil point out something about our God.  At the moment his people were most powerless, God parted the Red Sea and the Israelites crossed to dry land. The stone had been rolled back when the women arrived.  In fact, the tomb was empty.  There was no need for burial anointing.  Somehow in the early morning of the first Easter all the betrayal and shame of Good Friday disappeared in an incredible sense of forgiveness all seen in the folded up burial & tidied clothes of the Master.

The Resurrection of Jesus is not only a detail in our profession of faith; it is an invitation to hold us out our empty cups to the Lord of life so that they can be filled.  Empty is a big Easter word.  An empty tomb means that death does not have the final word. There is more to the story.   Easter is not just one day out of the year.  Easter is ongoing. It is a verb.   It is what happens for human beings when trust wins over suspicion, whenever kindness pushes meanness aside.  Whenever goodness overcomes evil.  Easter happens whenever empty hearts hear the words of the Christ say, “I have come that you may have life, life in all its fullness.” Because the tomb was empty, Easter is the answer to every emptiness you or I may ever encounter. 

The Easter mystery recalls that our lives have been signed with the signature of Jesus. Death and resurrection are not one-time events that occur at the end of the journey.  They are the pattern of our lives every day.   After these days of “sheltering in place,” I wonder what new forms our lives will take individually, as a country and globally.   I wonder what joys will be shaken awake in us as Christ raises us to new life beyond this present death.   Poet laureate Maya Angelou lingers about this in her poem, “Still I Rise,” as she speaks about the past horrors of our American Holocaust, the great enslavement and a people rising to new life:

“Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise . . .
Leaving behind the nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.”

Thanks to staff, friars and friends who have made all this real for us here at St. Mary’s these past days.   Even with social distancing, we have found ways to minister together.  The Basilica is an amazing community; more than adequate to roll away that stone.  

Happy Easters – ¡Felices Pascuas Floridas!

A gentle week,
Fr. Michael Weldon, OFM