“HE DESTROYED DEATH: LET US KEEP HIS FEAST”
Saint Mark 16: 1-8
The Resurrection of our Lord: 17 April Anno Domini 2022
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
“And when the Sabbath was past…” Yes, yesterday, Holy Saturday was your Sabbath, your rest during Holy Week 2022.
You’re not a 1st century Jew and thus you may have actually been quite busy yesterday. The Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and Salome, were not…busy. They rested in great sadness. They mourned the death of Jesus of Nazareth. Their grief is hard to imagine. But we who have lost family members, have an inkling, a glimmer, of that pain.
But they had to get “on” with their lives—they had responsibilities and things to do. So do you.
These faithful, pious, and devoted women Grace have been designated, by The Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, the “Myrrh-Bearers.” This centuries old tradition is salutary. They “had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint Him.” Usually, three names are mentioned. Three, hmm. One of the Maggi brought Myrrh at His Nativity. No doubt there were a few more: the “other” Mary—the wife of Cleophas and mother of James and Joses; Joanna, Salome, and “others” as Saint Luke mentions—probably Susanna.
Faithful women then. Faithful women now. The problem was that they thought their Master was dead. They came to anoint a corpse.
That’s what enemies of Christ thought then and still think now, over two thousand years after His Resurrection…if they even think about Jesus at all. Philosophers, “Scientists,” Doctors, and all of their pseudo-educated dupes and lickspittles mock the Easter event. So too do the other major world “religions” of works and laws. Everyone, or most everyone, thinks they are too clever, smart, and curiously probing, to believe that a man can rise from the dead. And they most assuredly don’t think that Jesus was more than a man. In a way that’s fine. The Lord isn’t going to force someone against their will. The Holy Ghost, The “Lord and Giver of Life” doesn’t torture compliance and acceptance like a Satanic Stalin. The Spirit converts people, turns people, enlightens those that sit in darkness with He Who is The Light! And this day we confess: The Easter Light! God is God. Truth is Truth. There are universals for God made the Universe (actually it was the Second Person of The Trinity—The Logos—as Saint John elucidates in his Gospel’s prologue). You can screech that 2 plus 2 is 5. You would be wrong. You can bluster that a man can become a woman, and vice-versal You would be wrong. You can create false histories, sects, and pagan religions—even pagan ‘Murican religions & denominations; you can argue that Jesus is not God but a mere agent, avatar, angel, representative, apostle, or prophet of God. You would be heretical and wrong. That’s most of the world. In a purely apologetics sense, my response is “oh well.” In a Christian sense, we pray for the non-believers, we intercede for them in our petitions, but we do not coerce them or persecute them. God (our heavenly Father), Jesus, The Holy Spirit, will gather those who are gathered. “Not our heaven; not our Saints.” Jesus is Lord and God as Saint Thomas so succinctly put it. “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high, I cannot attain unto it. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”
Even as the Myrrh-Bearers did not, could not roll away the stone from the sepulchre, so too they could not roll away from their own dying bodies the two stones of The Law. Jesus did the obeying and the lifting and the crushing of the stone tablets when He let them crush and asphyxiate Him on the tree. Jesus kicked the stone away from the tomb like he kicked/crushed the head of the serpent.
A “young man” i.e., an angel of God, told them “Be not affrighted.” This morning an old man, an angel of God, i.e., a messenger, dressed also in white, tells you: “be not affrighted!”
The Father’s “only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, hast overcome death and opened unto [you] the gate of everlasting life!”
He is risen, He is risen indeed, Hallelujah! Believe that. Believe it. Believe Jesus. Pray that your belief is solid, flexible, unbreakable, powerful, and life changing. Pray that what you say you confess is how you live and act and die—die, temporarily. For “when you awake, [when you are raised from the tomb like He raised Lazarus, the widow of Nain’s son, Jairus’ daughter—like He will raise your mother, father, brother, sister, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends and loved ones—He is still with you. Hallelujah!”
So be not “affrighted” when you encounter death, even your own, or when you are attacked by the ravages of this sin-filled and decaying world. The tomb is empty. All tombs will soon be empty. “Christ, [your] Passover, [was] sacrificed for [you]. “…by His death [He] hath destroyed death, and by His rising to life again, hath restored to [you] everlasting life.”
This is why Jesus forgives you your sins. As the Reformer states: “where there is forgiveness of sins there is also Life.”
And if you believe that that “life” is only for the “here & now” the present physical world, then you are, as Paul says: “if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” [1 Cor. 15.19].
“Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So, when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory…thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” [1 Cor. 15. 51-57].
Magdalene and the others “trembled and were amazed.” Sure! Good! “Neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid.” Sure! Good! They were afraid that their news was too good to be true; but it was—too good, eternally good—and they did in fact believe it. They spoke to no “men” on the way to the Disciples—no time for diversions—the Gospel must be delivered to those who would be Christ’s Deliverers to the World.
World: Hear the pure Evangel which changes everything, which changes you now and forever:
He is risen! He is risen, indeed. Hallelujah!
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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