After the emptiness of Holy Saturday comes the blinding light of Easter. As the Gospel accounts attest, the reality of the Resurrection is at first difficult for the disciples to grasp. In Matthew’s Gospel (28:1–10), the angel must tell the two women, “Do not be afraid,” and they are “fearful yet overjoyed” as they go to announce the news to the disciples. In John’s account (20:1–9), read this morning, Mary Magdalene runs to tell Peter and the beloved disciple in her disbelief, and the evangelist specifically tells us that “they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”
As Christians living in the light of the Resurrection, we can and do experience the grace of Easter in our own lives. The Gospels indicate, however, that this Easter grace cannot be anticipated, but rather that it breaks in unexpectedly, shattering the darkness that envelops us and forcing us to see everything in a completely new light. This grace of Easter is the grace of conversion after a period of intractable sin, of sudden fruitfulness in the Lord’s service after months or years of fruitless toil, of overwhelming consolation after seemingly endless aridity—in short, it is the grace of life coming out of death. Today, it is worth contemplating the sheer gratuity and unexpectedness of the Resurrection, so that when the Lord offers us the grace of the Cross in our lives, we might persevere through the darkness of faith to enter once more into the brilliance of Easter.