Today’s find: Dawning

Early, on the first day of the week, Easter dawns … with lightning, thunder, rain … in my little corner of the world.

Embracing the day, I am blessed to see how Light shines in the darkness, and darkness has not overcome it.

Embracing the day, this holy day.

If I step out my front door this day, soon enough I’d be all wet. 

Is that how the women of Galilee felt, I wonder – like they were all wet – when they encountered the empty tomb on the first Easter morning? Luke tells us “they were puzzling over this, [when] behold, two men in dazzling garments appeared to them. They were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground.”

Who could believe such a story?

But they told it. And others came to see and believe. 

Two billion others, two thousand years hence.

What dawned on those holy women … dawns on us anew … as we embrace this holy, rainy day. 

And as it dawns, we pray that our hearts and minds be expanded to absorb a Wisdom that reigns beyond the ages. That, even today, we be given the grace to encounter Christ, the Risen One:

This one is ‘the Alpha and Omega,’ this one is ‘the beginning and the end,’ – the beginning which cannot be explained and the end which cannot be grasped. This one is the Christ. This one is the King. This one is Jesus. This one is the Leader. This one is the Lord. This one is he who has risen from the dead. This one is he who sits at the right hand of the Father. He bears the Father and is borne by the Father. ‘To him be the glory and the power to the ends of the ages. Amen.’ *

Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.

IHS

* Bishop Melito of Sardis (160–170 CE), Homilia in Passionem Christi, The Cambridge History of Christianity, Volume 1 Origins to Constantine, edited by Margaret M Mitchell and Frances M Young, (Cambridge University Press 2006), p.10