Our Lady Saint MaryBarry, J. G. H. (Joseph Gayle Hurd)
Religion
Our Lady Saint Mary
Barry, J. G. H. (Joseph Gayle Hurd)
Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint -- Meditations
women who had followed Him and "ministered of their substance" who were
faithful still. The Mother had no "substance"; she shared the poverty of
her Son. Her support during the Sabbath would be the expectancy of
looking once more upon His Face.
But when the first day of the week dawned it proved to be a day of
stupendous wonder. They, the Disciples and these faithful women, seemed
to themselves, no doubt, to have passed into a new world where the
presuppositions of the old world were upset and reversed. There were
visions of angels, reported appearances of Jesus, an empty tomb. Through
the incredible reports that came to them from various sources the light
gradually broke for them. It was true then, that saying of Jesus, that
He would rise again from the dead! It was not some mysterious bit of
teaching, the exact bearing of which they did not catch, but a literal
fact! And then while they still hesitated and doubted, while they still
hid behind the closed doors, Jesus Himself came and stood in the midst
with His message of peace. It is often so, is it not? While we are in
perplexity and fear, while we think the next sound will be the knock of
armed hands on the door, it is not the Jews that come, but Jesus with a
message of peace. Our fears are so pathetic, so pitiful; we meet life
and death with so little of the understanding and the courage that our
Lord's promises ought to inspire in us! We stand so shudderingly before
the vision of death, are so much appalled by the thought of the grave!
We shudder and tremble as the hand of death is stretched out toward us
and ours. One is often tempted to ask as one hears people talking of
death: "Are these Christians? Do they believe in immortality? Have they
heard the message of the first Easter morning, the angelic announcement
of the resurrection of Christ? Have they never found the peace of
believing, the utter quiet of the spirit in the confidence of a certain
hope which belongs to those who have grasped the meaning of the
resurrection of the dead?" Here in Jerusalem in a few days the whole
point of view is changed. The frightened group of disciples is
transformed by the resurrection experience into the group of glad and
triumphant missionaries who will be ready when they are endowed with
power from on high to go out and preach Jesus and the resurrection to
the ends of the earth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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