When loved ones die and are gone, we try our best to keep their memories alive so that they can still be with us even if we do not see them bodily anymore. I keep Ima and Tatang alive in my daily prayers and somehow they are still with me. Is it possible this is also what happened to Christ at the Resurrection? That out of the intense love of His disciples and their utter sadness over His death, they kept His memory alive by re-living His presence with them? For after all, didn’t He tell them to “Do this in memory of me?”
Through the centuries, there have been enduring doubts about the reality of the Resurrection. That it is just a myth, a mass hallucination by a band of grief stricken followers, a hysteria foisted on simple-minded folks. Indeed, there is nothing in science or even in rational terms that can explain the phenomenon. We can only talk about it in mystical and spiritual terms. And yet, the accounts were all consistent: “We have seen the Lord.”
And I am thinking: If Someone can create something out of nothing, can’t that Someone transform the something He created into yet another something? If Someone can bring forth the light by simply saying the word “Let there be light!”; can He not shed light into our feeble minds by becoming just like us? If that Someone can fashion out human life out of star dust, can He not say but the word and that human life is restored, renewed and transformed?
I have not put my finger at His side as St. Thomas did. I did not encounter Him at the road to Damascus as St. Paul did. I did not have the experience of tongues of fire to have the wisdom to understand my faith as the Apostles at Pentecost did. I have but glimpses of His Presence in my here and now, in nature, among the people I love and serve, among the people who have shown me love and care, in the unfolding of what is good and beautiful. I struggle daily with my Easter faith, trying to understand it more fully and, more importantly, to live it in my daily activities. And in my struggling, I say humbly and fervently with Mary at the empty tomb: “I have seen the Lord.”
The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.
Jesus said to her, “Mary!”
She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni,”
which means Teacher.
Jesus said to her, “Stop holding on to me,
for I have not yet ascended to the Father.
But go to my brothers and tell them,
‘I am going to my Father and your Father,
to my God and your God.’”
Mary went and announced to the disciples,
“I have seen the Lord,”
and then reported what he had told her.
John 20:11-18