Easter Vigil

Gospel Reading: Mark 16:1-7

1 When the Sabbath was over, Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, brought spices with which to go and anoint him.

2 And very early in the morning on the first day of the week they went to the tomb, just as the sun was rising.

3 They had been saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?'

4 But when they looked they could see that the stone - which was very big - had already been rolled back.

5 On entering the tomb they saw a young man in a white robe seated on the right hand side, and they were struck with amazement.

6 But he said to them, 'There is no need for alarm. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified: he has risen, he is not here. See, here is the place where they laid him.

7 But you must go and tell his disciples and Peter, "He is going be­fore you to Galilee ; it is there you will see him, just as he told you ".'

Gospel Meditation

The gospels all tell us that Jesus rose from the dead. They give us, however, two different accounts of this central moment of his life.

In St Mark 9:19, St Luke (gospel and Acts of the Apostles), and St John , the apparitions of Jesus after his resurrection take place in Jerusalem. This was the place where he had re­cently been crucified and put to death.

In St Matthew and in this section of St Mark, Jesus is said to return to Galilee after his death. It is there that the later ap­paritions take place.

Each of the two accounts has its own greatness and richness. In our meditation then, we should concentrate on the text before us; for the time being we ignore the other accounts, even though we may be more familiar with them.

St Mark tells his story from the perspective of the women who went to the tomb. We naturally follow them and interpret the story from their point of view. This also happens to be ours at certain moments in our lives.

We can also read it from another point of view - from the perspective of the disciples who, in contrast to the women, re­mained indoors. They happened to be there at this time and they received the good news about the risen Jesus from the women who spoke from their experience.

Verses 1 and 2. The women in the story are all three symbols of people who know how to go out and watch faithfully over someone who has died. The text tells us that they 'brought spices with which to anoint him'; they did not, therefore, expect any resurrection from the dead.

This is important for us as very often we too have no indication that we can expect a dead per­son to start a new life. We do not expect them to give rise to a fresh beginning.

The text gives us three expressions symbolising new life: 'very early in the morning', 'on the first day of the week, they went to the tomb', 'and the sun was rising'.

All three remind us that the day of great darkness mentioned in St Mark's gospel did not last 'forever'. The events on this morning, very early the next day, brought a new dawn. It was truly a time of new light.

Verses 3 and 4. The stone in front of the tomb is symbolic. It symbolises the many obstacles which we know can lie between us here and now and the working out of the new story of grace.

We think of examples: persons who hold us back because they do not want us to go forward with some kind of newness;

objects which we know will stand in our way unless we take active steps to get rid of them and move to a new kind of relationship;

God himself is often experienced as someone who distracts us from giving ourselves fully to others. We think for exam­ple of people we feel naturally attached to - a spouse, child­ren, friends, fellow-workers, people who share in our politi­cal platform. We react to them as if our being close to God means that we should love them less.

Verses 5 and 6. The words of the young man in the white robe express the heart of the mystery of the empty tomb. With him, therefore, we enter into the dramatic contrast between the two attitudes of the women: a fear of things or objects that we know still stand in the way of our future progress; the reality of the risen Jesus; he is now totally free of what limits us to the here and now.

Prayer

Lord, we thank you for faithful people: friends who stay with us when we let them down;

members of our parish who persevere in the community in times of discord;

those in our movement who are not discouraged by corruption and betrayal within it; people in the Middle East who continue to work for peace.

While most of us looked on past hopes as dead and gone, they, like the women at the tomb of Jesus, continued to mourn for what they had lost.

So they were there very early in the morning, when a new day had dawned and the sun had started rising again.

They were able to announce to us who had lost hope the good news that it was the first day of a new beginning.

Lord, we remember a time when we were in some bondage: we were in the grip of some addiction; our family life was in deep crisis; unemployment had us totally discouraged.

Now, looking back, we remember how we worried about something that turned out to be no problem at all: what our friends would say; how one particular child would react; whether our health would stand up to work.

We were the women on Easter morning asking themselves who would roll away the great stone from the entrance to the tomb, when the moment of grace had already come and the stone was quite irrelevant to their situation.

Thank you, Lord.

'Walk the dark ways of faith and you will attain the vision of God,'
St Augustine

Lord, forgive us for continuing to focus on the past: we harp on wrongs done to us by parents or teachers; we regret mistakes we made, opportunities we missed; we want to prove we are better than others; we try to rebuild relationships that have ended; we resent getting old or sickly.

Send us someone like the young man in the white robe who spoke to the women at the tomb of Jesus to tell us that crucifixion is not the end, we must not look for Jesus in a tomb, because he has risen, he is not there.

Your will is that we go back to Galilee to resume our lives because he is going before us there and it is there that we will see him, just as he told us.

'All nations have opportunities which they may grasp if only they can summon up the courage and the will.'
Sir Arthur Lewis, West Indian economist

Lord, there are nations today that are trapped in an endless cycle of racial, ethnic or religious conflict - the Middle East , the Basque Country, Sudan.

We thank you for the women of these nations who, like Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of Jesus, and Salome, have seen with their own eyes that life cannot be contained in a tomb, and have gone to tell their leaders that they must move forward to a new place where they will find life, just as you told them.

Lord, sometimes the good news of resurrection from the dead is so overpowering that all we can do is to run away, frightened out of our wits.