The experience of Easter as recollection

The celebration of the Lord’s resurrection is different depending on where you live. Easter celebrations and liturgies in Esquipulas, Guatemala, for example, fully consume the entire town during Holy Week. Tucked away in this mountain town is a shrine to the “Black Christ,” among the most popular pilgrimage sites in Central America. Regardless of one’s beliefs, everyone in town is involved and affected by the celebrations. The normal routine stops for at least one week, if not for the entire month leading up to Easter.

This is not the case everywhere. In many other places, circumstances barely hint at the Easter Solemnity of the Lord’s Resurrection. If you live in a place like this you have the good fortune of being in an environment very similar to the one described in the Gospel of Luke. In Luke’s Gospel, the women who first evangelized the world themselves needed help to see and believe. The world had not stopped to allow them to savor their experience. They had only the ability to remember the first experience of Easter.

In Luke’s resurrection account, women held a privileged position as witnesses to the holy and strange things that were happening. Meanwhile, the men of that same community struggled to believe what they had been told and seen with their own eyes. All four of the Gospels share a common scene on the first day of the week where women discovered Jesus’ empty tomb. In all four accounts some of the same elements are present: A rolled-away stone from the entrance, the presence of supernatural beings, and instructions to go and announce what had been witnessed. The particular emphasis and details of each account vary considerably.

What does Luke communicate? The third Gospel depicts a group of women who are instructed to remind themselves of what they already knew. Startled by the empty tomb and the two men in dazzling garments, the two heavenly beings offered guidance to these women through the act of recollection. “Remember what he said to you while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified, and rise on the third day” (Lk 24:6-7). The women we are told include Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and several others. This group probably included some of the women who followed Jesus along the way of the cross who lamented and mourned his death. Their experience was now beginning to shift. 

The two dazzling beings presented an almost creed-like declaration of the facts (“Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but he has been raised. Remember what he said to you while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified, and rise on the third day” Lk 24:5-7). Only then do the women recall something they already knew. “And they remembered [Jesus’] words” (Lk 24:8). This is an anticlimactic and remarkably human encounter. There is no vision, no mystic revelation. They simply remember. The first Easter experience was an act of remembering Jesus’ words and experiencing the faith that they continued to inspire. It serves as an example of what Easter continues to be for us today. In places where the dominant culture has moved away from a focus on Christ’s death and resurrection, we are challenged to remember what it means to have faith in modern times. 

You may not live in Esquipulas or in the many other places that will remind you on every corner of the special season of Easter. But you might be like the women in Luke’s Gospel at the empty tomb, startled. Just practice remembering Jesus’ words that have been with you all along. It might seem like a tenuous way to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. Just remember though that the first disciples responded to the women’s announcement with total disbelief: “Their stories seemed like nonsense and they did not believe them” (Lk 24:11). Only when Peter remembered the Lord’s words did he run to the tomb.