Mary of Magdala leaves the house when everything is dark in the sky and somber in her heart. She’s been restless all night, and the image of Jesus on the cross broke her heart. She has nothing in her hands, carries no spices like the other women, and has only her love rebelling against the absence of Jesus: “To love is to say: you will not die!” (Gabriel Marcel).
Once she arrives, she is bewildered; the stone is rolled aside. The tomb is wide open, empty, and resplendent because the first sunrise shimmers inside the bare tomb. Outside, it is spring. The tomb is open like the shell of a seed.
There’s an absent body from the tomb, walked out from death’s grip; Death is at a loss. A crucified man is now missing, which seems impossible since death is unforgiving.
She is fixed on a lifeless body, but Jesus always exuded life; death had no chance with the light of the world. Jesus is not merely the man who escaped death outside Jerusalem. He is life—the source of life!
If we form the body of Christ together, then we must follow his path; concurrent with me is the cross, and concurrent with me is also the Resurrection. Whoever lives in him, whoever is understood in him, is taken up by him in his Resurrection.
Upon seeing the empty tomb, Peter and John confidently declared the veracity of Jesus’ words—He had indeed destroyed death! Alleluia!