THOUGHTS TO PONDER

“Who are you looking for?.......”

As a child in Ireland there was plenty to look forward to at Easter time – holidays from school, often a few days on the coast in Donegal, primroses in abundance in the garden and nearby wood, the coming of warmer weather allowing us to spend much of the day outside, and chocolate Easter eggs to enjoy… And – regular as clockwork- the church choir would sing ‘All on an April evening…’ I remember it as a happy time, though the reasons then would have been circumstantial rather than theological!

As an adult, I became aware of the place of Easter in the liturgical calendar, and have sometimes spent Holy Week in retreat, on occasion within a monastic community. Retreat gives freedom for a while from the demands of daily life, and allows reflection in greater depth on the issues central to one’s journey. Silence is the medium – a rich, fertile, enabling context. Most recently, I joined the Cowley Brothers in Cambridge, Massachusetts for that week. The meditations and liturgy were an attempt to relive the events of the Passion of Jesus in a meaningful way, which was quite powerful. And Easter Day was truly a feast day – with much conversation and celebration….

I love the account by the writer of John’s gospel of Mary’s encounter with the ‘gardener’. Filled with grief at the death of Jesus, and expecting to find his body, she is instead asked ’Who are you looking for?’ Her grief spills out. But her weeping turns to wonder. He is not among the dead. A new reality has begun. Marcus Borg, a leading Biblical scholar, differentiates between the pre-and then post-Easter Jesus, the former being the historical human man Jesus, and the latter the reality experienced after his death. The disciples thought at first it was ‘only an idle tale’, but they, too, became convinced by their experience of the post-Easter Jesus. That experience of a divine reality is of course the bedrock of Christian tradition.

Yesterday came the flyer for this year’s Edinburgh Festival, with the declared theme being the words of Christopher Columbus, when he wrote “following the light of the sun we left the Old World”. It’s a lovely image. I couldn’t help thinking that (with minimal tinkering) it would make a good theme for the church too – ‘following the light of the son we came to the new world.’ That suggests movement, process, dynamism – the verb is present continuous – and it reminds us that the ‘new creation’ in the Eucharistic prayer is not yet here, but defines our direction... ‘Who are you looking for?’ may well be the most searching question you are ever asked…

Mary McMahon