Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went away quickly from the tomb,
fearful yet overjoyed,
and ran to announce the news to his disciples.
Jesus had promised, "So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you" (see John 16:22). For Mary Magdalene and the other Mary this joy was still in the process of breaking through into their lives. They were overjoyed and yet still fearful. They can therefore be a paradigmatic case for us who are in much the same position. We experience the joy of the resurrection but it often feels like our fears are more real and have more influence on us than that joy.
And behold, Jesus met them on their way and greeted them.
They approached, embraced his feet, and did him homage.
Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid.
We need to come to a deeper faith in the resurrection. We need to move beyond a place where our belief is a likely guess based on what we have been told to something to which we ourselves can bear experiential testimony. Only this testimony, this encounter with the risen Lord, can truly cast out fear and lead to lasting joy. Only if we meet Jesus on our own way and hear him say, "Do not be afraid" will fear truly begin to lose its hold on our hearts. What subjective sign will there be when we experience this? Rather than being dominated by fear, rather than hiding and locking ourselves away from the world, we will begin to taste excitement at the new possibilities of hope unlocked by the resurrection.
Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee,
and there they will see me.
If we feel afraid, this is normal. We may feel reluctant, but even so we should ask Jesus to meet us on the way, to hear him say to our hearts: "Be not afraid!" He wants us to have an assurance of his resurrection on which we can stake our entire lives.
But since he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn an oath to him
that he would set one of his descendants upon his throne,
he foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ,
that neither was he abandoned to the netherworld
nor did his flesh see corruption.
God raised this Jesus;
of this we are all witnesses.
Exalted at the right hand of God,
he poured forth the promise of the Holy Spirit
that he received from the Father, as you both see and hear.
When Jesus tells us he is risen and counsels us against fear he is doing so to prepare us to receive the Holy Spirit. Just as the old Adam received life by the breath, the ruah, of God, so too does redeemed mankind receive new life by the breath of the Spirit. Our experience of Easter begins with the testimony of others, moves to the testimony from Jesus himself, but as still something external to us, on toward Pentecost where the testimony of the resurrection becomes something internal to us. We can get caught up at any of the initial two steps, but joy and courage await when we truly open ourselves to Spirit. But we cannot simply 'do' this. We must not skip the steps along the way. We should go and listen to the witnesses of the resurrection and ask Jesus to meet us along the way. Doing these things will open us up and make us free enough to hope and believe in what the Spirit can do us in us. This is how we prepare for Pentecost. And only Pentecost can make us bold like the Apostles, like Peter from whom we hear in the reading from Acts.
This man, delivered up by the set plan and foreknowledge of God,
you killed, using lawless men to crucify him.
But God raised him up, releasing him from the throes of death,
because it was impossible for him to be held by it.
Jesus rose in order to share his resurrected life with us. Let's not be content to simply hear about it and yet continue with our previous levels of fear and sorrow.
Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices,
my body, too, abides in confidence;
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