Larger and Deeper

The empty tomb causes different reactions:

There are some things that cannot be known without love, some dimensions of reality that are a closed book without it. By love two persons are opened to each other’s mystery.

Love in this sense is not Mary Magdalen’s clinging to the physical remains. Nor it is Peter’s violent enthusiasm.

It is larger and deeper than either of these. It goes by signs: by hints and allusions. It doesn’t need to be bombarded with evidence. Straightaway it sees the pattern in the little evidence it has (Aidan Nichols, Year of the Lord’s Favour, Vol.2, p.162).

The beloved disciple possesses this ‘larger and deeper’ love:

He enters the empty tomb and sees and believes (John 20).

Can we see ourselves in the beloved disciple?

The faith of John is the faith of the contemplative, the mystic, the saint.

We may well react against such a description of ourselves. But given the way the world is – with both its subtle and brutal attacks on God – might we entertain the thought?

With love present in our spirit, soul and body, we run to the tomb, just like John, and we see and believe.

Amen.