PART TWO

CHAPTER XX

THE RESURRECTION

And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted; ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here.

S. Mark XVI, 6.

O God, who wast pleased that thy Word, when the angel delivered his message, should take flesh in the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary, give ear to our humble petitions, and grant that we who believe her truly to be the Mother of God, may be helped by her prayers. Through.

O Almighty and merciful God, who hast wonderfully provided perpetual succour for the defence of Christian people in the most blessed Virgin Mary; mercifully grant that, contending during life under the protection of such patronage, we may be enabled to gain the victory over the malignant enemy in death. Through.

OLD CATHOLIC.

W

HATEVER may be our grief, however life may seem to have been emptied of all interest for us, nevertheless the routine of life reasserts itself and forces us back to the daily tasks no matter how savourless they may now seem. We speedily find that we are not isolated but units in a social order which claims us and calls on us to fulfil the duties of our place. Blessed Mary was led away from the tomb of her Son in the prostration of grief; but her very duty to Him would have forced her thought away from herself and led her to join in the preparations which were being made for the proper care of the Sacred Body. And in that sad duty she would find solace of a kind; there is an expression of love in the care we give our dead. This body now so helpless and unresponsive, has been the medium through which the soul expressed itself to us; it has been the instrument of love and the sacrament of our union. How well we know it! How well the mother knows every feature of her child, how she now lingers over the preparations for the burial feeling that the separation is not quite accomplished so long as her hands can touch and her eyes see the familiar features. In the pause that the Sabbbath forced on the friends of Jesus we may be sure that they were making what preparations might be made under the restrictions of their religion, and that they looked eagerly for the passing of the Sabbath as giv

ing them one more opportunity of service to the Master. There was the group of women who had followed Him and "ministered of their substance" who were faithful still. The Mother had no "substance"; she shared the poverty of her Son. Her support during the Sabbath would be the expectancy of looking once more upon His Face.

But when the first day of the week dawned it proved to be a day of stupendous wonder. They, the Disciples and these faithful women, seemed to themselves, no doubt, to have passed into a new world where the presuppositions of the old world were upset and reversed. There were visions of angels, reported appearances of Jesus, an empty tomb. Through the incredible reports that came to them from various sources the light gradually broke for them. It was true then, that saying of Jesus, that He would rise again from the dead! It was not some mysterious bit of teaching, the exact bearing of which they did not catch, but a literal fact! And then while they still hesitated and doubted, while they still hid behind the closed doors, Jesus Himself came and stood in the midst with His message of peace. It is often so, is it not? While we are in perplexity and fear, while we think the next sound will be the knock of armed hands on the door, it is not the Jews that come, but Jesus with a message of peace. Our fears are so pathetic, so pitiful; we meet life and death with so little of the understanding and the courage that our Lord's promises ought to inspire in us! We stand so shudderingly before the vision of death, are so much appalled

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ours.

by the thought of the grave! We shudder and tremble as the hand of death is stretched out toward us and One is often tempted to ask as one hears people talking of death: "Are these Christians? Do they believe in immortality? Have they heard the message of the first Easter morning, the angelic announcement of the resurrection of Christ? Have they never found the peace of believing, the utter quiet of the spirit in the confidence of a certain hope which belongs to those who have grasped the meaning of the resurrection of the dead?" Here in Jerusalem in a few days the whole point of view is changed. The frightened group of disciples is transformed by the resurrection experience into the group of glad and triumphant missionaries who will be ready when they are endowed with power from on high to go out and preach Jesus and the resurrection to the ends of the earth.

What in these first days the resurrection meant to them was no doubt just the return of Jesus. He was with them once more, and they were going to take hope again in the old life, to resume the old mission which had been interrupted by the disaster of Calvary. All other feeling would have been swallowed up in the mere joy of the recovery. But it could not be many hours before it would be plain that if Jesus was restored to them He was restored with a difference. A new element had entered their intercourse which was due to some subtle change that had passed upon Him. We get the first note of it in that wonderful scene in Joseph's Garden when the Lord