Christ is Risen! And our hope lives, despite everything.
The Paschal Mystery is a "mystery" indeed ... and no popular opiate or naive panacea. As the Gospel reminds us: "It was very early on the first day of the week and still dark ..." (John 20:1) when "some women" (Luke 24:22) proved to be the only ones among Christ's disciples to have enough courage to go to the tomb, to the place of death and defeat, despite death and defeat, because for the men, it seems, the time was still "inopportune", such an act "incomprehensible" and perhaps even "offensive" and "scandalous" ... and certainly dangerous. But, in silence, and with purpose, they carried the myrrh with which they were going to anoint — christify — the Christ.
It is "very early" now, and "still dark" in so much of the world — and not just in Ukraine and Russia, but in Syria and Yemen and China ... but why list them! Because the darkness is in the human heart.
If the Light of the Resurrection does not reach into the empty tomb of the human heart then all the mass graves and war councils of the world will remain hidden and hiding in their self-made darkness. Our faith convinces us — and, yes, convicts us — that the incomprehensible Light shines in that darkness that cannot comprehend the Light or overcome it; that the Light of Life swallows up death by death; that by dying, Christ conquers, and by rising bestows life upon a dead world.
Let us learn from the "women among us" who "astounded us" (Luke 24:22), and continue to astound us even now, in season and out of season, lest we incur the Lord's admonition: "O you foolish men! And how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!" (Luke 24:25)
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