Easter Sunday

By Father Scott Archer
April 12, 2020

“He is risen” (Mark 16:6 Douay-Rheims Version).

On this day of joy and hope, which saw Christ rise from the dead, many of the faithful are filled with grief and despair. As the world shakes under the weight of a pandemic, a pandemic which has led even to the faithful being denied participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and catechumens the sacraments, Easter reminds us of the One who suffered and died to restore the relationship between God and man. Christ’s bodily resurrection gives hope to those even in the most grievous torments. We are never entirely free from suffering in this world; however, if we unite ourselves spiritually with Our Lady, we see that joy follows sorrow.

The sufferings of Mary at the foot of the cross were real and agonizing as she gazed upon what men had done to her Son. It was an agony we cannot imagine, and this transpiercing of her soul—what Simeon at the Presentation had described as a sword that would pierce her soul—was very deep. Faith does not take away suffering, though what she suffered was neither for trial, purification, nor did it stem from any doubt in God’s salvific plan. Since she was without sin and had no need to be tried, her suffering came from pure love.

She knew what her Son had to undergo in order to redeem mankind, and she believed He would rise from the dead as He had proclaimed, but this did not diminish her suffering in any way. Though not recorded in Scripture, Christian tradition holds that Our Lord first visited His mother after He rose from the dead. Referring to a revelation by Christ, St. Teresa of Avila wrote, “He told me that immediately after His resurrection He went to see Our Lady because she then had great need and that the pain she experienced so absorbed and transpierced her soul that she did not return immediately to herself to rejoice in that joy. By this I understood how different was this other transpiercing of my soul. But what must have been that transpiercing of the Blessed Virgin’s soul! He also said that He remained a long time with her because it was necessary to console her.”

As the Mother of God, it was only fitting that the first to learn of the resurrection was she who had brought forth the Redeemer and experienced the anguish of Calvary. The Carmelite priest, Andrea Mastelloni, O. Carm. wrote, “The pain she did not experience when she gave birth to her divine Son, increased a thousand times (as we say in the Office of her Compassion in the Carmelite Breviary: ‘You did not feel pain when you gave birth to your Son; when your Son was dying you suffered this pain a thousand times increased’), she experienced at the death of her Son. This was the hour of the spiritual childbearing, the hour in which all souls were redeemed and regenerated. The Mother of Christ became the Mother of Christians.” As children of Our Lady, we announce the joy that overcame her grief because the resurrection of Our Lord is the miracle that confirms His triumph over sin and death.

Because Jesus rose from the dead, we have our own future resurrection in which we may hope if we persevere in sanctifying grace. It is the promised resurrection that is even now shared by Our Lady, who was assumed body and soul into heaven and is a sign of our own future resurrection. She mirrors the beauty and magnificence of her glorified Son, as the Carmelite mystic John of Saint Samson, O. Carm., wrote, “… as though You and Your Mother were one and the same. She is truly one with You, considering her in the depths of Your being, but considered apart from You she is a different being. But what am I saying? She does not separate herself from You, nor You from her, and her being in You and You in her eternally fills all blessed creatures with indescribable and limitless joy and glory.”

We are joyful in the resurrection because Christ conquered sin and death. As the Mother of all the faithful shared in His suffering and now shares in His resurrection through her glorified body united with her soul in heaven, so we may have hope in eternal life after our sufferings in this world have ended. Our Lady intercedes for us, her children, that we may use all the graces which come to us through her hands to persevere in the Catholic faith and be welcomed one day into the kingdom of heaven.