WHO SHALL ROLL AWAY THE STONE?

 A SERMON FOR EASTER SUNDAY

Very early on Sunday morning, three women went to the Holy Sepulcher where our Lord had been lain on Friday afternoon.  They hadn’t had the time to anoint his body on that awful day.  Our Lord had died at three in the afternoon, and the few hours that followed before sunset and the start of the sabbath were filled with the sad task of taking his body down from the cross and wrapping it quickly in his burial shroud.  Nor had they been able to perform the ritual anointing on the intervening Saturday, as that was the feast of Passover and the strict Mosaic laws were still being enforced.  And so, very early on Sunday, these three women, Mary Magalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, showed up at the Holy Sepulcher, all ready and eager to anoint the body of our Lord at last.

Perhaps it was their enthusiasm to finally accomplish this final service to their Lord that made them forget one very important problem that would prevent them from doing it.  A “very great stone” had been placed at the entrance to the tomb, far too heavy for these three women to roll away themselves.  As they approached the sepulchre, it finally occurred to them that they wouldn’t be able to do what they came for, and they asked each other “Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulcher?”

However, when they arrived, they saw that the stone had already been rolled away.  They had come to perform a holy task, believing it to be the right thing to do, God’s holy will.  And somehow, the one obstacle in their path had been removed, by means unknown.  Knowing the rest of this story and what comes next, we are well aware that the removal of the great stone was an act of God, an essential part of the story of the Resurrection. 

We take it for granted that they were engaged in doing God’s holy will, and that therefore he made it possible for them to complete their task by rolling away the stone.  There’s something fundamentally wrong with this assumption.  It was not God’s will that they should anoint the lifeless corpse of his Son.  Christ was risen!  Yes, he rolled away the stone, but it was for an entirely different purpose.  It was so that they could enter the tomb to hear the message of the angel “He is risen, he is not here: behold the place where they laid him.”  Instead of performing a sad ritual that Easter morning, they were instead privileged to be the first to hear the good news of the Resurrection.

How many times has this happened in our own lives.  We try so hard  to do the right thing, and instead of accomplishing the good things we set out to do, we encounter instead all manner of obstacles that  prevent us from doing what we assume to be God’s holy will.  We want to do good, to pursue our intentions of following God’s will.  And yet, almost inevitably, a great stone stands in our way and we are not able.

Instead of wallowing in self-pity because things don’t go our way, things we believe are of God and for God, we should pause and reflect on today’s Gospel and realize there may be a very good reason why God does not roll away the stone that gets in our way.  We should never presume, as the three holy women may have done, that God will intervene, or maybe send someone along to make everything go smoothly.  God alone knows when his intervention is truly for the best, and will help us out when he sees fit.  And we should never presume that just because we are doing a good thing, it is God’s will that we do it.  He may have a completely different path that he wants us to tread, and for a far more important reason.

Three women went to the tomb that Sunday morning.  Are we perhaps a little surprised that the Blessed Mother was not one of them?  The reason now perhaps becomes a little clearer—for starters, she alone had the faith to know he would not be there.  She was acquainted far better than anyone else with the true will of God, and so she knew God’s will was not that she could go to an empty tomb to anoint a body that wasn’t there.  Perhaps she had already witnessed the first apparition of her Son early that Sunday morning?  The Scriptures do not mention this event, but it seems most likely, and is the general consensus among the Fathers of the Church, that this would have happened.  Our Blessed Lady is always the one whose example we should follow, and so whenever we place our trust in God, we shouldn’t scurry around presuming to know his will.  We should rather be at peace, understanding that God will somehow make his will known to us if we take the time to listen.  God may or he may not move away any stones that obstruct our path, but if we follow our Lady in trusting divine Providence, we can be sure that he will bring us to the desired goal he wants us to attain.  God can and will move any stones out of our way if he wants to, but even if he does, it may not be so that we can accomplish what we set out to do, but rather so that we can find what God really wants us to do.  Let’s pray this Easter that we may find our way, the way of God, so the heavy stones in our path may be removed.