image: LumoProject.com

Mary Magdalene relives that moment in the graveyard on the first Easter Sunday:

Weep?!

I could have shed buckets full,

there in the garden

all alone.

.

I don’t know, really, what I went looking for.

I just knew I had to get away.

I didn’t want to be with anyone

– only him –

and that was impossible.

.

In the mist of the early morning

I sought out that strange comfort

of just being near him.

Perhaps I would talk to him

– or, at least, to his grave.

Maybe he would hear me

for he,

unlike so many,

had truly heard me before.

Either way,

I could talk

and weep out the pain of my heart.

.

And yet even that was stolen from me.

Vandals!

Thieves!

How dare they?

How could they do this to him?

…. to me?

.

Stunned beyond hatred

the questions flooded out with the tears:

Why?

Why?

WHY?

And, at a voice,

“Sir,

if you know,

tell me what they have done to him!”

.

There was something in that voice

that broke through my hysteria:

a quieting peace

as I heard him call my name.

.

As the veil of tears lifted,

and my eyes could at last focus on his face

– that sight

I just could not believe.

But, yes…YES!

I grabbed him.

I hugged him.

And laugh?  I nearly cried!

(c) Nick Stanyon. Easter 1991