Easter, that is, don’t be afraid. This is the cry, the prayer, the wish that the Gospel of Mark makes resound in our communities. The cries that come to us from the world are instead cries of fear, cries of the oppressed, of tombs always full without distinction of people, language, religion, gender.
The women who go to the tomb to honor the body and mourn Jesus recall the multitude of tears that rises to heaven from this earth, where the story of Cain repeats itself. The perplexity of the women at the tomb is also ours, of us struck almost irremediably by the stone that hit Abel. Who will roll away the stone before the tomb? This question contains all the questions of every man and every woman: the stone has already been rolled away, but to see it they have to look up, go beyond fear, perplexity, fate. The women’s gesture is a profession of faith.
When the young man in the white robe appears, the women are afraid, a fear similar to amazement, wonder, the awareness of being faced with an unimaginable event, difficult to contain in an explanation. As the story continues, the explanation that the women bring to the disciples seems like a raving, proving that the fact has no confirmation in human language. And in fact the evangelist abandons human language and uses divine language: “Do not be afraid”; do not be afraid of God who died for your love, for the love of all, who experienced the blows of Cain’s stones up to the greatest humiliation, the cross.
The young man in the white robe reminds the women that the one they seek, Jesus of Nazareth, is the Crucifix; but the Crucifix is Risen, the Father resurrected him so that all those who believe in Him are no longer hit by Cain’s stones and so that, rather than hitting, they offer their lives to give life to the world. Jesus, the Nazarene, is no longer either on the cross or inside the tomb: now in the faith of Baptism he is inside the life of the world, inside our life, even in the most closed and darkest corners. He is there and awaits our Resurrection and supports us in our resurrections, indeed he anticipates them: his will is that we not linger in the process of our Resurrection.
Christ resurrected early in the morning to indicate that the Resurrection of the sinner must be rapid: happy Easter of Resurrection.
padre Andrea Marchini, dc
