DAILY DEVOTIONAL

Sunday, October 21, 2018

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”– John 20:1-2

Mary Magdalene, finding the empty tomb, enters into a state of anxiety, the kind of anxiety that comes with sudden changes and a bewilderment as to what to do.

Mary Magdalene, by her coming to the tomb to do widow’s work, was quite naturally trying to extend her love of Jesus.  He had died, she had wept, now his body needed to be prepared and then laid to rest.  It was what loving widows did in those days … and it appears Mary Magdalene placed herself in that role.  But then … even that grieving act of love was snatched away, his body was nowhere to be found.  Surely an anxious gasp filled that bewildering moment …”What do I do now?!”

She first runs to find someone to lean on, to ask the questions that now fill her mind, to find an embrace of comfort for the wounds in heart.  “What has happened?  What do I do? What does this all mean for me and for all of us?”

I have lived through a number of those anxiety-filled sudden changes.  And each time my mortal self has cried out to God, “Lord, what has happened?  What do I do?”  It is a shock to one’s soul, and each time I “ran” to someone and Someone who would give me an emotional embrace, give me time for the shock to settle, and then to reassure me that soon I will better understand.

Everyone needs a someone and the Someone in times of sudden anxiety.  It is the work of faith that has someone and Someone into whose steadying arms one can run.

Always in Christ’s Service,

Fr. Charitas de la Cruz