While it was still dark…
…she went to the tomb.” John 20: 1
I love early mornings. I always have. As a child I used to get up early when on holidays and go for a swim. My father used to say he woke up to my splash in the pool. There is something about early morning before anyone else has touched it. Prayer, sensing God’s presence, is always easier for me then. I can taste him in the silence, reaching out for me.
So the reading about Mary, up before all the rest to be with the One who had become the centre of her life and being – even if only to anoint the body – echoes true to how the human heart – my human heart – loves and longs. It echoes his own patterns, in the midst of a busy life and the demands of many, he is up and out to sense the true meaning and direction of things with and from the One who sent Him. I’ve always been fascinated by Jesus’ lone prayer time. I my first “imaginative contemplations” , I would creep up on him, not wanting to interrupt but yes, wanting to listen in, or to get close, when no one else was. So it’s often where we meet now.
Salvador Dali, Christ of St John of the Cross. (c) photo Maeve Louise Heaney
Solitude and aloneness: it is the paradoxical tension of life in which we are always, at depth, alone, while also surrounded by the love of a Triune (read family) God and connected with each other through bonds that run deeper and longer than those of flesh and blood (and these are strong!). Our encounters with God are often in the depths of ourselves, which implies we need to make sure we maintain and curate access to that depth.
I have written on this recently – Creativity and Solitude – watch this space.
Pope Leo XIV on Easter: “Jesus has risen, and that changes everything. He has saved us and continues to save us, and that instils hope in our lives”.
Hope, in the midst of such a world? Today, as we watch the ongoing, unbelievable, sufferings of Christ in his body through mad, misguided, and brutal wars, I pray for peace. I get up early to taste the life of God that sustains my life. And I pray that somehow that life might reach the corners that need it most.
“In Him we live and move and have our being” Acts 17:28