Run and Reverence: Meeting the Risen Christ
Villmer, Assistant
Principal
~ I love Mary Magdalene. I love that she went looking for Jesus first. I love that Jesus revealed Himself to her—and she got to run and tell the others. What a holy privilege. This lights my heart on fire. I want to run. I want to be first. I want to tell.
In today’s Gospel (John 20:1–9), we see that same urgency: Mary runs, Peter runs, and “the other disciple ran faster than Peter.” (This phrase always makes me laugh because I not only hear and see this in the children each day at school, but I also recognize this desire in me – to be the fastest.) Some theologians have reflected that it’s LOVE that runs ahead. That it’s Love that cannot wait and moves the heart toward Christ with a kind of holy impatience.
And yet, this faster disciple, whom we think is John – though he arrives first – does not go in. He pauses. He waits. He reveres the mystery.
Run… and Reverence. This is Easter.
From my own life, I have come to know that God is revealing Himself constantly – in every moment – if we choose to look. Over Spring Break, my husband and I drove the California coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco. We stood among the silence of the towering redwood trees, hundreds – thousands – of years old. We listened to the rage of the ocean as it crashed and boomed against the cliffs. We breathed it in. We sat. We explored. We ran.
And in that place, these words settled deep in my soul:
The Exhilaration of the Exploration.
The Reverence of the Natural Soundscape.
This is who God is for me. And this is who I am in God.
I sense the same in Mary Magdalene on Easter morning. I hear her breathless voice as she runs: “They have taken the Lord… where is He?!” There is urgency, longing, searching. But then – He comes. Quietly. So quietly, she does not recognize Him at first.
And then… the moment of Reveal. He KNOWS her. And she KNOWS him.
Easter is both the running and the stillness. It is the search and the surprise. It is the God who meets us in the exhilaration – and in the silence.
So I ask you this Easter morning:
Are you running?
Are you running toward the Risen Christ?
Are you seeing Him – today and every day – in His glory and yours, in His death and yours?
Because He is here…
Quietly.
So quietly.
Waiting to be recognized. Alleluia.
Throughout the year, we present an article in the bulletin each week on a variety of topics, written by a member of our Parish staff or ministries on a rotating basis.
