Monday, April 6, 2015

REFLECTION
 
 
EASTER: THE WOMEN, THE ROCK, THE WAY (AND A FLAGON WITH SPICES).

Martí Colom

 

            On the way to the tomb, walking under the first sunlight from Sunday’s dawn, the three women asked themselves who would roll back for them the huge stone from the entrance of the sepulcher.

            Yet, they kept moving.

            They brought with them a flagon with spices to anoint Jesus’ body. They knew that between them and the deceased there was a massive rock.

            But they walked on.

            They could have stayed in the city, mourning in resignation, telling each other: “It would be beautiful to anoint his body, but it is useless to go: a tremendous stone blocks up the access and prevents us from reaching him. Let us stay here, and cry.” But they did not. Dawn came and they left the city, on their way to the tomb.  In spite of the rock.

            They were not smarter or more spiritually shrewd than the rest of the disciples. All of them had heard from Jesus’ lips his foretelling of the Resurrection, but they carried spices for a dead man. They weren’t sharper, or holier. Maybe they loved him a bit more. And perhaps that is why they walked. Guided by an unspoken instinct made with a mixture of affection, hope and doubt.    

“What shall we do with the stone?”

They climbed the dusty trail knowing that they were approaching a large rock that they could not move, but they kept on nonetheless.

Maybe that is all they could do. If they had stayed still in the city they would have died of sorrow. They had more doubts than certainties, but somehow they understood that it is always better to walk amid doubts that to decide beforehand not to take the first step. The rock did not kill their wishes.

And it was because they went to the tomb, filled with hesitation, to look for one who was deceased, that they could see the stone rolled back. Then they were the first ones to hear, from that young man, that their teacher lived and lives. The Easter of Jesus sprouted in their hearts.

I bet that when they left, in love with life, they forgot somewhere in the dust the flagon with the spices. Maybe they left it half buried, useless and absurd, at the foot of the enormous rock.

 

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