Fearful Resurrection

We always see the Resurrection from the point of view of those who witnessed it. Those who saw you in the garden, who ran to see the open tomb. But I wonder, what was it like, opening your eyes in the early hours of the morning, seeing the first sliver of light as the stone rolled back, ending the eclipse of life by death.

I think we often imagine it, if at all, as a something from a superhero movie. You rise up from the stone slab, light radiating from your body. All at once the bandages burst from your body as resurrection energy surges through the darkness of the tomb.

I wonder. You were human with us once, in the tender frailty of infancy, the lonely watches of Gethsemane, the terror of abandonment. Were you also human in this moment, blinking with new eyes at the thin light of dawn?

Did you rise, trembling, still smelling of embalming spices? Strip the funereal wrappings from your body like a cicada shrugging off its old skin, wet wings still translucent, too tender and new to fly?

Did it take you time to learn to navigate in this new body, to stand, to shuffle forward towards the aperture that the angels had opened in the darkness? Did you take a minute to stare in wonderment, amazed at the new blood flowing through veins that were so recently cold and stiff?

And when you looked at your hands, your side, was there a moment of silence as you remembered the trauma of the Cross? Were you immediately reconciled to the fact that these scars would always and forever be a part of your new body, your new identity, your resurrected life? Or did you need to sit shiva with your wounds, at least for an hour?

Did you spend a while sitting, overcome, the memories of that fearful descent still haunting your thoughts? Did you grieve for the souls that would not follow the path that you opened for them, the new road out of hell?

My God, my beloved, you who shared in the fear of death and suffering, did you also share in the fear of change, rebirth, new life?

I ask not from disrespect, but only because I have heard your voice calling me out of the tomb and I both yearn and fear to accept your invitation.