Easter Alleluia Happiness!

Tell Them . . .
Breaking through the powers of darkness
bursting from the stifling tomb
he slipped into the graveyard garden
to smell the blossomed air.

Tell them, Mary, Jesus said,
that I have journeyed far
into the darkest deeps I've been
in nights without a star.

Tell them, Mary, Jesus said,
that fear will flee my light
that though the ground will tremble
and despair will stalk the earth
I hold them firmly by the hand
through terror to new birth.

Tell them, Mary, Jesus said,
the globe and all that’s made
is clasped to God’s great bosom
they must not be afraid
for though they fall and die, he said,
and the black earth wrap them tight
they will know the warmth
of God’s hands 
in the early morning light.
Tell them, Mary, Jesus said,
smelling the blossomed air,
tell my people to rise with me
and heal the Earth’s despair.
(Edwina Gately, There was no path So I trod one”)

Mary Magdala’s Easter Prayer by Ron Rolheiser (1985)

I never suspected

Resurrection

and to be so painful

to leave me weeping

With Joy

to have met you, alive and smiling, outside an empty tomb

With Regret

not because I've lost you

but because I've lost you in how I had you –

in understandable, touchable, kissable, clingable flesh

not as fully Lord, but as graspably human.

I want to cling, despite your protest

cling to your body

cling to your, and my clingable humanity

cling to what we had, our past.

But I know that . . . if I cling

You cannot ascend and

I will be left clinging to your former self

. . . unable to receive your present spirit.