The Reunion to Come

April 4, 2010
Happy Easter!

The Resurrection and the Life

I cried a lot today. I cried in Mass, I cried in Twelfth Night, and I cried in Pericles. It was a good crying, a "my heart is so full" crying.

This will be my second-to-last daily reflection. I want to finish 3 John since I loved 2 John so much tomorrow. I will continue, however, to reflect on the Mass readings every Sunday, and I would like to add one more entry a week, although this one will be more irregular. So, my two lovely readers, check back in this time next week if you're still interested!

I kept thinking today about the change it was. The women came to the Tomb because they had to leave the ritual unfinished on Good Friday. The Sabbath prevented them from washing his body clean of the blood that poured out of Him and wrapping his limbs and pour the ointments and perfumes.

Walking to the Tomb that day they were preparing themselves for this, all the practical things that had to be done with a dead body had probably been covered (at least well enough) on Friday, but they had to come to the tomb and put their hands on his body one more time, moving slowly and quietly and thinking about who he was and how he changed their lives and what he did for them and why. And slowly, as they worked, teach themselves to think of him in the past tense, slowly teach themselves how to live in a world without him, as they wrapped his lifeless limbs and perfumed his bloody head and closed his wide, staring eyes, they would teach themselves how to move on.

But that is not the story that greeted them. The rituals of farewell were unnecessary. Only Mary Magdalene saw Him again that day, but what had to be stopped, both those angels in blinding white robes, was the ritual farewell. Because it would never again be fully appropriate.

Every culture, every religion, every people and every mourning community there has ever been has the ritual goodbye. The burning pyre, the funeral, the coins for the ferryman, the closing of the coffin. They're about honoring the dead, but they're for us. For us to stand together and teach ourselves, in the midst of rituals structured enough to not require our thoughts and symbolic enough to speak more closely the language of our souls, how to live in a world without our beloved. And they involve direct contact with the physical dead body because they involve forcing ourselves to know, with our hands and our eyes, not just our ears and our minds, that our loved one is dead and gone and will never return. So that we can move on with our lives. So we can let go. It's why deaths that leave no body for the family to bury are so cruel. We must who ourselves, physically, that our loved one is no longer here, and see that the world continues on. So must we.

But the women on their lonely walk, the first step of their journey to acceptance of death, and all of us who mourn without remembering the promise of Easter Sunday, are only seeking the living among the dead. He has gone ahead of you. So have they all. They followed Him.

And we weren't to the ascension yet, the living could not yet touch the dead after they had risen. There is still a veil that separates us, but we do not now have to teach ourselves to live in a world without those we love. We have to learn how to find them in Beyond, to find their love and spirit reaching down from the place to which they have ascended.

Twelfth Night and Pericles are both stories of reunion, the reunion with those who perished at sea. And they're fairy tales rather than symbolic mysteries, so the plotlines run more along the lines of "reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated," but the feeling is the same. When Viola and her brother stare at each other, scarcely brave enough to believe that death and tempests could be so kind as to spare them - scarcely daring to believe that death was but a temporary parting, because they never could let themselves believe that there was a reunion to come.

Thaisa and Pericles spent twenty-eight years apart because of a difficult childbirth, massive miscommunication, and superstitious sailors (hey, I didn't write it). Their daughter Marina was lost fourteen years later to pirates (again, don't look at me) and spent her time converting the customers of the brothel to whom she was sold from their wicked ways until her father wandered close enough for his best friend to hear tell of her way of speaking. And it took forever, watching them, because you knew the truth, but finally they could not hide from their wild hopes any longer and they let themselves believe that the world could be kind enough to reunite them. And then the Goddess Diana appeared and led them back to Thaisa, who caught on quicker and shed her nun's livery in the joy of reunion.

But the first story, the first I heard today and the first of its kind in the world, was when Mary Magdalene and the other women with her came to the tomb and saw that the great stone had been rolled away. And they were surprised, but they were probably little more than relieved at one less problem they had to solve this morning that would be so hard to get through with such painful lessons to teach, but then the body was gone and they couldn't quite let themselves believe that the world had changed and become that much more kind until the angels told them that they would not have to spend this day learning to live without the Son of God. And for the one who could not believe, who could not believe after her terrible life and the torture of her soul by seven demons for heaven knows how long, for the one who always believed in Him the most and needed Him most desperately, she was given the reunion that had been promised her that very day. It was not complete, because she had a mission to complete on the other side of the veil of death, but it was the first such gift.

And that moment when the reunion we didn't dare believe would come sweeps over us is the most joyful and heartbreaking and shattering and life changing and exhilarating moment that exists - because we could never quite believe that the promised reunion was to come. Because it would break our hearts. And those of us who do keep that hope are so at peace that we look twice as crazy to those who cannot find that peace, that gift. We look daft, we look like we are in denial.

We just believe. He has gone ahead of you. They all have. He went to prepare a place for them. And you. The reunion, the completion of our joy, is yet to come. Tempests, all deaths, are kind.