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Monday, September 14, 2015

Spirituality: “The Women at the Tomb”

In all the Easter Gospels it is the women who go to the tomb and meet the Risen One. Women were the first witnesses of the Resurrection. That must have been quite a challenge for the church of men. The skepticism felt by the men toward the reports of the women is shown in Luke’s comment: “But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them” (Luke 24:11). Men need to see and grasp everything and are therefore not able to perceive the invisible. Women have a feeling for birth and death. They wait patiently beside the cross while the men flee. And so women become the witnesses of the new birth, of the new life that rises from the tomb. …

The Church today would be well advised to believe the women’s message. Women have a healthy intuition for what awakens life within us. The Easter Gospels invite us to pay particular attention to what women have to tell us today: at home in the family, at work, or in personal encounters. Can you find something in their words that is new and unusual? Can you sense in their words the quality of the Resurrection? Each of us, male and female, contains within us something of the feminine. The women who encountered the Risen One at the tomb encourage us to trust this “anima” of ours – the soul, the interior premonitions of our heart. In the silent impulses of our heart we experience Resurrection. Here, frequently, the Risen One moves us and gives us the courage to get up, to approach a particular person, to say the word that is on the tip of our tongue, to tackle the problem which we are trying to evade. Today, therefore, listen consciously to the silent voices of your heart – voices that know that the Resurrection can become reality for you today, which trust in the life that conquers death, and in the love that is stronger than death.

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