Easter Sunday | Just After Sunrise
“Satan, sin, and death have been conquered. The world has changed, but almost no one knows it.”
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, …they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe and they were alarmed. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here….” Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.
- Mark 16
We think of Easter Sunday as a grand crescendo—for on this event rests our entire faith. Yet according to Scripture, the resurrection of our Lord was a surprisingly subdued event, announced in secret to the unlikeliest of witnesses, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome: fearful, grieving women who learned of their beloved Jesus’s resurrection in quiet, under cover of early dawn.
Without spectacle, this Jesus, born into a silent night was resurrected in a sunrise garden. We, too, have received this glad news, “Christ is risen.” God’s cosmic redemption is accomplished. Let us be radiant! Alleluia!
….Then suddenly, a different atmosphere,
A clarity of light, a strange release,
And, all unlooked for, Christ himself was there
Love in his eyes and on his lips, our peace.
So now we breathe again, sent forth, forgiven,
To bring this breathless earth a breath of heaven.
-Malcolm Guite
It is the day of Resurrection; let us be radiant for the festival, and let us embrace one another. Let us say, O brothers and sisters, even to those that hate us: Let us forgive all things on this Resurrection Day; and thus let us cry: Christ is risen from the dead, by death He has trampled down death, and on those in the tombs He has bestowed life.
-Orthodox Doxastikon of Great and Holy Pascha