The First Glorious Mystery- The Resurrection of Jesus

The First Glorious Mystery- The Resurrection of Jesus

Several years ago, we started attended the Easter Vigil Mass (rather than Easter Sunday) again because our children as a group were old enough. The incident is recorded in the annals of Alderman history. Consider it our version of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.  I'll not go into it here. We'll just say that after the Mass, the associate pastor and the two of our offspring who were serving couldn't wait to hustle over and find out what was so outrageously funny in the Alderman pew.

The final incident in the string of you-can't make-this-stuff-up comedic moments...the one that sent us all over the edge, went like this:
       The pastor ( who was not my biggest fan to begin with) was giving his homily. He talked about the first commemoration of Easter after Christ rose from the dead- in essence, the first Easter Vigil. How the apostles built a fire and waited through the night. "They waited. And they waited. And do you know what they were waiting for?" he asked.

A small voice beside me answered loudly , "The Easter Bunny?"

Yeah. Boy, did I get a look from the pulpit.




Most of us have had the experience of standing at a graveside. The rite of committal is over, it is time to leave. Time to go home.

It seems difficult to do, though. It seems so final. No one wants to be the first to walk away...eventually someone does, perhaps with some parting words to the immediate family. A few people will linger longer than others,

Imagine how the followers of Jesus felt. They had rolled the stone in front of the grave to close it. It was time to leave, the sun was setting and it was the eve of a holy day. They had to go.

Confusion. Sorrow. Despair. Loneliness.

We know how they felt. How empty that evening and the next day must have been without their friend, their teacher. How painful it must have been, replaying the events of Friday, realizing how they had let him down, how they had not been there for him. Conversation was, I'm sure, difficult, as they each confronted their sorrow and guilt in their own way.

Sunday morning. The women go to the tomb to complete the burial rituals for which there had not been time.
Get your Bible.
Matthew 28:1-10
Mark 16:1-8
Luke 24:1-12
John 20 1-18

While the accounts differ slightly, that does not mean there is conflict among them. In fact, most of the details can easily be formed into one account.

So contrast the feelings on that first Easter Sunday with those on Good Friday. I'm betting they were still plenty confused, but were they starting to piece it together?

"Destroy this temple and I will raise it up in three days" John 2:19
"And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and [of] the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again." Mark 8:31
"From that time forth began Jesus to tell his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day."  Matthew 16:21

...it was more than they could dare hope.

Hope is the lesson of the First Glorious Mystery. We stand by the grave, and we hope. We hope that everything Christ is promised is true. We hope that those we love are in a better place. We hope that one day, we, too, will share in that promise. And we always must remember that we cannot get to Easter Sunday without first journeying through Good Friday.