Who are you looking for?

Here I am Lord,
Listening
Speak to me
within my heart and soul.
I am listening.



John 20:14


Who are you looking for?

Reflection

How strange to be the only one here who mourns.

Is it so easy to forget? Is our own safety so much more important? Those that said they would die with him – hiding behind shutters in darkened rooms. No matter, the whole world is dark to me now and I sit with just words of hope.

The guards have left for their beds; they have had no need of their swords. But see; the stone rolled away. Will they have taken him? Will there be further humiliation to prove that we cannot stand against the Roman Empire? But where, where has he gone?

A shadow crosses my eye line; perhaps one of the others, perhaps a gardener. Perhaps not a gentleman – to ask so starkly ‘Who are you looking for?’ But he may be my only hope, so I reply and then - he speaks my name.

Master, Rabbi, Lord, friend, my life, my heart – it is him – how could I not have seen, not recognised?

But not him – or rather less the man he was and more the promise that had been held within; unguarded; exuberant as joy, as delight. Divine Life, Divine Light. So much more and yet the wounds – he will not forget, will not allow himself the mercy of forgetting – what he suffered, the sacrifice he made - he wears them still. He will wear them always – this was no god’s folly, easily forgotten, easily mended.

This Son of God, Son of Man, bore the life he was given, as we do, and remembers, as we do – except for him it will be for all of Time – the suffering, the dying, the rising but all of it outdone by the Love that lives within him for us, for all of us.

How easy to have stayed by his side, to forget the pain, to forget the world - but that is not his way. By his simple commandment he sends me – to love others as myself; to go and tell of his return. To give hope, to give truth, to bring the message of eternal life.



Contemplation
Expectation

You would wonder why it was only one person who seemed to get ‘it’. That the Resurrection that Jesus told them would happen in three days – really was going to occur?

We do most things in community in our faith, we pray, we worship, we celebrate the Mass that Jesus gave us mostly as a community – even if it is just two or three gathered in his name.

But maybe, there are times when the meeting needs to be more personal, more direct. After all, you are unique; the life spread before you is only yours; your relationship with your God is as individual as between any two who love each other.

So sometimes, you can’t be with the others, you hear your name called and despite everything, you have to go. Even then it may not be so easy – finding time to sit; to search your heart; to wait until the time is right.

But when the time is right you will have that meeting with Jesus who is not only man but the Cosmic Christ- who fills everything, including you, with Light - the meeting that will change your life; your perception; your heart and that, no doubt, will send you out to tell the others.


Closing Prayer
May the blessing of the Sacred Three
The Father who gave us the Word
The Son who is the Word
The Spirit who opens the Word within us
Be with us today and evermore.

Amen

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