It’s an expression we often use when we’re excited about something. Maybe it’s anticipation waiting for a movie to be released. Maybe it’s for buying the first local grown corn for the season. Sometimes for me it the desire to go out cruising with the top down for the first time. We all have things that we look forward to.
But that’s NOT the perspective we find within the Myrrhbearing women today. They indeed “can’t wait,” but it’s NOT for a task they ever wanted to do. In fact, it’s probably the thing they least wanted to ever have to consider doing—going to anoint the decaying body of their executed Lord.
But even in being something that they didn’t want to have to do, they couldn’t wait to go.
In today’s Gospel from St. Mark, at the end of Chapter 16 he carefully records for us how St. Joseph of Arimathea lovingly buried the body of our Lord. That account ends with these words: And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses observed where He was laid.
Note their careful observance of where to find the Lord’s body when they would return. We know that Joseph and Nikodemus lovingly prepared the body, which means that it took time! Who knows when they finished with the strips of linen and the spices? One estimate places the cost of the spices used (100 pounds according to St. John (Jn 19:39) at between $100,000-200,000! But the women were there, to see where He was laid!
St. Theophan writes of this day, saying this:
The tireless women! They would not give sleep to their eyes nor slumber to their eyelids (Ps 131:4) until they found their Lord! But the men dragged their feet. They went to the tomb, saw it empty, and remained in confusion about what it could mean because they did not see Him.
Does this mean that they had less love than the women? No, here was a reasoning love which feared making a mistake due to the high price of this love and its Object. When they too saw and touched Him, then each of them, not with his tongue like Thomas, but with his heart confessed, ‘My Lord and my God!’ (Jn 20:28), and no longer could anything separate them from the Lord.
The Myrrhbearers and the Apostles are an image of the two sides of our life: feeling and reasoning. Without feeling life is not life. Without reasoning life is blind, it offers little sound fruit, and much is wasted. We must combine both. Let feeling go forward and arouse; let reason determine the time, place, method, and, in general, the practical arrangement of what the heart suggests for us to do.
“Myrrhbearers” Joseph and Nikodemus gave absolutely no consideration to cost. The “new tomb” itself had to be incredibly expensive. And the spices according to one source were sufficient to embalm 100 men. It didn’t matter to them. The Man whom they at first honored secretly, now they honor Him openly, and unlike His Apostles, show no fear in asking for His body, and caring for Him with such great love.
There was no less love in the women. For their faithfulness, they were rewarded to be the first among all to see the Lord resurrected. And they became the first evangelists!
All became witnesses to that once in eternity event of God working our salvation, once for all of humanity, once for all time.
Christ is Risen!
Indeed, He is Risen!
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