By Melanie Rigney
Beloved: What was from the
beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked
upon and touched with our hands concerns the Word of life—for the life was made
visible; we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life
that was with the Father and was made visible to us… (1
John 1:1-2)
On
the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the
morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. So she ran and
went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them,
“They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.”
So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb.
They both ran, but the other disciple
ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first; he bent down and saw the
burial cloths there, but did not go in. When Simon Peter arrived
after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had
covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.
Then the
other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he
saw and believed.
(John 20:1, 2-8)
Piety
Lord, I
offer up humble thanks for the great messengers You have used to share Your
Word, among them Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, Gregory, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome,
Teresa, Therese, Catherine, and Hildegard. I ask that You illumine for me as
You did for them the ways in which I may serve.
Study
And so he
arrived, Emmanuel, God among us. He didn’t stride his way into Rome, kicking
rears and taking names. He didn’t march into Jerusalem, at least not at first,
proclaiming he was the new sheriff in town.
No, he came
into the world the same way we all do, born like hundreds or thousands of other
babies were born that day, some in palaces, some in caves, some in mangers. It
made him accessible, a little too accessible for many to believe he could
possibly be the Messiah.
We
celebrated his birth two days ago, or at least attempted to amid the gifts and
the parties and the family squabbles and the exhaustion. In today’s Gospel
reading, we are reminded how it will all end. He will hang on a cross like
common criminals of his day. But there’s a twist: When his friends get to the
tomb to prepare him for burial, there’s no body. And because they saw and
believed, from his lowly birth or the day at the temple or his baptism or
anywhere along his public ministry, all the way to the Ascension, we believe. We
believe because they were fearless in their faith and by turns precise and
illuminating about the knowledge he bestowed upon them. We believe because we
see his work in our lives 2,000 years later, and we know he is the truth and
the light and the way.
We may not
write as well as John, whose feast day we observe today. We may not be as
gifted with the charism of the small ways as Therese of Lisieux. We may not be
the mother Mary was, or as indifferent to worldly things as Ignatius was. And
yet, in some way, there is something special in the way each of us is called to
his service. Just as Jesus’s life for the first thirty-three years was for the
most part unknown, so the greater world may never know what we do for him while
we are here on earth. But he will. And that is all that matters.
Action
As you take
a breath in the weeks between Christmas and Lent, what can you do to keep your
focus on serving the Lord?
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