When Mary comes to the tomb of Jesus early Sunday morning and sees the stone rolled away, she immediately runs to tell the other disciples what she assumed to be true: someone had come and taken away the body of Jesus.
Peter and the other disciple (presumably John), hearing the news, run to the tomb to see if what Mary reported was so. Upon arrival, they actually enter the tomb, see that Mary had told them the truth, and return to where they were staying, unsure how to respond, numb from the catastrophic events of the last few days.
Mary, upon arriving at the tomb for the second time, now enters. She encounters two angels, in white, who ask her a question: “Woman, why are you weeping?” She responds again with her assumption: “they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him”. She then turns away and encounters a man, again making an assumption about what she has encountered without really looking. She assumes he is the gardener.
Are we not all just like Mary? We make assumptions about what we think is going on, or about what we think we know, without really taking a good look. And once the assumptions are made, recorded somewhere deep within our cerebral cortex and our hearts, they cloud our capacity to see. What lifts Mary out of the fog created by a simple refusal to take a look? Once she has turned away from the man, rooted is her assumption about who he is and what has taken place this new day, Jesus simply calls her by name: “Mary”.
It takes faith and courage to take a look, really look at what the truth is – what is really going on. Most of the time, it takes way more faith and courage than we have available as broken and frail human beings. But step into the tomb we must. It is our part in realizing the truth about who we are and what God has done for us through His Son.
Happy Easter,
Vincent of Saragosa
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