A Mary Moment Monday post
Ah, Lent is over. We leave the desert for the feast.
And I find myself wondering, yet again, what the point of it all really is.
Chocolate bunnies and shreds of colored grass? Fancy new shoes and curled hair? Egg hunts and bouquets?
It’s all too easy to get jaded and cynical about Easter, just as it is with Christmas. It’s oh-so-tempting to roll my eyes and declare that it’s getting too secularized.
I’m reminded, though, of an evening recently when I caught myself looking up from my book repeatedly with curiosity and disgust.
“WHAT are you watching?” I finally asked him.
He replied, but I don’t remember exactly what he said. I think we were watching an episode of Doomsday Preppers.
I couldn’t quite put my book all the way down: I wasn’t going to admit defeat to this dumb show.
And yet…and yet there was this grain of truth in what was underneath these people’s crazy obsession with preparation. There was this nugget within their craziness that appealed to me. There was something strangely appealing to the idea of being self-sufficient.
It took me a few hours to put my finger on what had me outraged, though.
“They don’t have hope,” I said at last, feeling triumphant. “These people are acting as though there is no hope.”
I don’t think any of those preppers would have called it a lack of hope. In fact, they would probably call their vast reserves of food and equipment and medical supplies the only hope they have in the face of certain disaster.
Except disaster isn’t certain.
That brings me back to Easter, to the Resurrection.
It’s the very embodiment of hope. God died in a savage, ugly, unthinkable way. He was buried. And then…THEN he rose from the dead.
Do I believe it? Do I live it?
Maybe what the Resurrection means for me is that hope must never die. Maybe what the Resurrection holds for me is a beacon that blinks “hope, hope, hope” in the face of despair and discouragement. Maybe what the Resurrection reminds me of is that before I give up, I need to give in.
Did Mary wonder? Did she doubt? Was it hard to say Yes to the uncertainty of the Passion?
Her reward was the empty tomb. Let it be mine, too.
—
The title to this post has been on my heart for a couple of weeks, and, in a fit of “What will I write?!?” I did some online searching.
I thought you would find this as interesting as I did.
John Paul II maintained, in his general audience of May 21, 1997, that Jesus appeared first to the Virgin Mary. Worth reading. Also worth contemplating at length.
image credit: MorgueFile
