“Fear can keep us up all night long, but faith makes one fine pillow.”

“Fear looks; faith jumps. Faith never fails to obtain its object. If I leave you as I found you, I am not God’s channel. I am not here to entertain you, but to get you to the place where you can laugh at the impossible.”

Gospel Text: (JN 20:11-18)

Mary Magdalene stayed outside the tomb weeping.

And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb

and saw two angels in white sitting there,

one at the head and one at the feet

where the Body of Jesus had been.

And they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”

She said to them, “They have taken my Lord,

and I don’t know where they laid him.”

When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there,

but did not know it was Jesus.

Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?

Whom are you looking for?”

She thought it was the gardener and said to him,

“Sir, if you carried him away,

tell me where you laid him,

and I will take him.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary!”

She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni,”

which means Teacher.

Jesus said to her, “Stop holding on to me,

for I have not yet ascended to the Father.

But go to my brothers and tell them,

‘I am going to my Father and your Father,

to my God and your God.’”

Mary went and announced to the disciples,

“I have seen the Lord,”

and then reported what he had told her.

How many times have we failed to recognize the presence of the Lord in our lives? 

More often than not, when things do not go our way, our immediate reaction is to think that God has abandoned us.  We let our emotions and anxiety take over.  We forget to pray.  We even blame God for what seems to be a setback.  We lose faith. Then, as our senses return and we are able to think better, we discover that it was actually a blessing in disguise.  We had to face the trial to enable us to become better people and to achieve a better ending.  Only then did we realize that "it was the Lord!"