A Meditation for Easter in 2026

In the early hours of Easter morning, her world crumbled ever further. Not only had Mary Magdalene watched Jesus be tried, crucified, and buried – He had now been taken from where she had prepared His body and laid Him to rest. Just think of her standing there in the cool of the morning as she accepted what her eyes were seeing. A flood of all kinds of emotions fills me. My heart would have broken again as my sorrow swelled and fear gripped me. Agony mixed with terror. Who would have had the power and authority to take Him away in the middle of the night?

She is stronger than I am. I would not have been with her beside the cross (see last week’s meditation).  I would not have woken early to tend to His body. I would not have been asked, or even trusted, to attempt comforting Mother Mary as she buried her Son. Yet, she was there, and she was looking at the stone rolled away and a tomb stripped bare. I’m not as strong as her, but even so I imagine she would have wept like I would have. It was all just too much. The loss, this moment, and trying to understand what happens now. 

The angels appeared to her and told her that Jesus had risen. That He was not with the dead, but alive. The stone was rolled away, and Christ was alive. This moment is present within our Urban Monastic seal, which is shaped like the stone rolled away on Easter morning with Christ in the center. A Christogram that excludes the three nails usually present to signify His resurrection in this very moment of the gospels. It is in this moment that Mary is told that Jesus will meet her and be with them soon.

I would not have been there with Mary. I doubt that I would have been one of His followers waiting in the locked upper room. In these moments after the resurrection, Jesus is on the move. He is not waiting to be found but seeking out those who love Him. Going to those He loves. This is the point of the story where I finally arrive. The stone has rolled away, His feet entered that garden, and His resurrected body was on the move. Jesus is going to those He loves.

Something had begun, and our God has not stopped going to those He loves. As centuries have passed, more and more people have found themselves invited to love and be loved by God. He shows us the way of love and of the kingdom where He reigns. His passion shows that it is through a love that breaks, weeps, and pierces that I can finally reject the world of death and enter a world of resurrection. As I praise Jesus for what He has done, it would be foolish to not expect Him to want to do the same in me. May His kingdom come in our world and within me. 

May our risen Christ, who loves you, raise you to life from death.