The Resurrection

Fruit Of The Mystery: Faith

The following meditations are provided to assist you while praying the Holy Rosary. It is offered in a format where a question is posed to lead the meditation and then is followed by an answer below it.  It may be more helpful to grow in your meditation skills if you try to contemplate the question while praying this decade of the Rosary, and view the possible answer upon completing the prayers for the Mystery.

The meditations below offer possible answers to questions regarding these Mysteries.  Because the Wisdom of God is infinite, there are limitless insights that one may gain from meditating repeatedly upon the questions surrounding these Mysteries.  There are no wrong or right answers when praying the Holy Rosary in this way.  We are simply seeking to be inspired in our understanding of who Jesus is and how much He loves us, as the Holy Spirit gently guides us through reflective prayer.

For many reasons it may be difficult to engage our minds to enter into meditating on the Mysteries at hand.  An alternative option is to simply meditate upon the meaning of the core prayers of the Holy Rosary as you are praying them.  You may find these reflections on the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Glory Be prayers to be helpful during these times.

The Stone

The stone blocking the tomb can represent all of the stumbling “blocks” which we place between Christ and ourselves.  For some, like the soldiers guarding the tomb, it can become a source of conversion when we literally see the miracle of the Lord removing the block.  For others it strengthens our faith, like the holy women who went first to the tomb, when we continue on our path to meet the Lord and arrive only to find that He has already removed the block by His grace.  For others it is confirmation of the faith that others pass on to us regarding the power of the Lord, like the disciples who find the block removed as reported to them by the holy women. 

The stone depicts God’s dominion over all, for nothing is impossible with God.  Though the women were wondering how they could possibly move the stone to enter the tomb, God had already provided a way.  In fact, He had not only opened the tomb, but in His great love for them He far exceeded their hopes and expectations; the holy women were sadly seeking the lifeless body of Jesus, but were exhilarated to experience Him in His glorious Resurrection.  This is true in our lives as well.  When we seek Jesus, we need not bring any worries or concerns about anything, for God will always provide a way for us to encounter Him, which is far more loving and fulfilling than we can imagine. 

Recognizing Jesus’ Presence in Our Lives

Through His Resurrection, Jesus opens for us the way to a new life. This new life means that we now have the opportunity to live in the grace of God and have an intimate relationship with our Creator.  It is by the power of the Holy Spirit, which Jesus sends to us after His Resurrection, that we can now make choices in our lives that honor this relationship.  New life indicates that there was an ‘old’ life that we have died to.  By His grace we can now die to our pride, bad habits and selfish decisions that ultimately cause pain and heartache in our lives.  This new life is a way of experiencing His joy and peace in each day, by humbly remaining content with whatever our day brings.  We display this by trusting that all things are part of Our Father’s loving plan to draw us into a more meaningful relationship with Him.  Though some of life’s trials may seem beyond difficult, the joy of the Resurrection is that we can now experience the comfort and consolation of the presence of Jesus in these times, Who strengthens us by His love and grace.  

Often we spend much time trying to ‘find’ Jesus, when in fact it is Jesus that is looking for us.  The only thing we are required to do then to ‘find’ Him is to simply be loved by Him, right where we are in our lives.  We see this after the Resurrection, when the Angel at the tomb tells the women that come looking for Jesus, that He would meet the disciples in Galilee.  Jesus repeats this message to the women Himself as He meets them along the way.  Essentially Jesus was telling them to return to their ordinary lives in Galilee, and they would find Him there. Jesus is true to His promise as He meets them in their daily lives as they are fishing for food.  Jesus continues to work in this way in our lives as He meets us in our everyday activities.  We must simply be open to recognizing His presence as we encounter Him in many unexpected ways.

We must remember that Jesus was, and still is the greatest teacher that ever lived.  He manifests Himself after the Resurrection in Galilee in a different form to teach the disciples to recognize His presence in others, and especially in their mission to call and receive others into the Body of Christ.  This mystery begins to unfold as we recall from Luke 5: 1-11, the instance when Jesus asks the disciples at this same location to cast their nets to catch fish, but their nets break.  It was at this time, during the early part of His preaching ministry, that Jesus tells His disciples He will make them fishers of men if they follow Him.  This scene is reenacted here after the Resurrection as Jesus asks them once again to cast their nets for a catch, but this time their nets do not break.  The disciples recognize from this same experience they had with Jesus several years before, that this was Jesus calling them from the shore.  Now that Jesus had Resurrected, the outcome was different as they were able to catch the fish without their nets breaking; the disciples were now ready to receive the Holy Spirit and begin their mission to build the Body of Christ as fishers of men.

For all practical purposes, we see the compassionate Heart of Jesus who knows His disciples were hungry because they had not caught anything all night.  From a spiritual perspective, Jesus has just taught them a lesson through the catch of fish, in that they were being called to begin their mission as fishers of men.  He would now provide food for them to nourish and strengthen them for the work which was ahead. 

God’s Love For Us

Jesus displays His great patience and love for humanity in this scene.  Though the disciples showed much fear and weakness during the Passion and in the upper room, Jesus comes to offer them His Peace.  Often this is the case in our lives as well.  Instead of seeking out Jesus, we hide behind closed doors in our fears; and in His great love for us, Jesus is the one who comes seeking us to offer us the Peace of His presence.  Are we able to recognize His presence and the Peace He offers us in our fears?  Or do we, like Thomas, lack the faith to believe unless we can see and touch Him?

Called by Name

1.  Do you hear Jesus call you by name?   What prevents us from hearing Him or recognizing His voice?

It is one thing to hear our name being called, and it is another to recognize the voice that is calling us.  Like any other relationship, being familiar with one’s voice comes from intimate experiences.  We must spend time in getting to know Jesus if we are to hear Him call us by name; and it is in these intimate moments that we will come to learn how much our Heavenly Father loves us each in such a special way.  It becomes difficult to hear this message of love, however, if there is too much noise interfering with His voice; these distractions are typically selfish desires or worldly attachments that occupy our attention.  On the other hand, by simplifying our busy lives and focusing our attention on matters that help us to appreciate the gifts He has given us, we can become more in tune with the ways He is expressing His personal love for us and calling us by name.

Faith  

Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene first before the other disciples because of her faith.  Even though she did not know Jesus would Resurrect, her faith in Jesus as Lord was unshakeable.  This was seen in her anointing of His feet, her presence in His Passion, and the fact that she was one of the last to leave the tomb on Good Friday and one of the first to return on Sunday.  Jesus was her priority and the Lord of her life.  It is only when we live completely abandoned to every selfish aspect of our lives and keep Jesus as our Lord and center, that we will begin to see Jesus appearing in our lives.

Before Our Blessed Mother experienced the elation of being united with her Son, she was filled will the anguish and sorrows of His death.  Yet she awaited His Resurrection with hope for her faith in Jesus to be justified and realized.  In our sorrows and anguish in the dark moments of our lives, we must also wait with joyful hope to witness the presence of Jesus in our lives.  Our faith is rooted in the promise of Jesus our Savior, that He would never leave us and will always come when we pray.  In seeking Him through prayer, truly we shall find Him.  How we experience the answer to our prayers, or His presence in our lives may be different then we expect.  We must be open to the many ways He appears in our lives.  There are an infinite number of possibilities, but our surest sign of Jesus’ presence is the sense of inner peace we receive from communing with Him.  We may also experience His love in consoling friends, natural beauty that calms us, songs that speak to our hearts, etc.

The tangible and objectively measurable property of Faith is Forgiveness.  Our faith is based upon receiving forgiveness for our sins from Jesus, and offering this same forgiveness to others in return for His Mercy.  Sensibly we can recognize if we receive the forgiveness Jesus offers us if we feel reconciled or guilty about our mistakes.  And certainly we can recognize in our hearts the sense of resentment we hold toward the offense of others, or the peace that comes if we have truly forgiven them.  To increase our faith is to increase in our ability to receive and offer forgiveness. 

5.  Where was Mary early the first morning?  Why was she apart from the women that she was with all throughout scripture and during the Passion? 

Because Mary was Immaculately conceived, we know that she was full of faith from her birth.   Throughout her life this faith had matured through her experiences and relationship with her Son from believing to knowing the truths of God.  She did not need to check the empty tomb to know that Jesus had already risen on the third day.  Perhaps she was not mentioned with the holy women or apostles, because she remained hidden and apart from them awaiting her precious Son to come to her first to comfort her most sorrowful heart.  It is very likely that Jesus would manifest His glorious presence first to the one who bore Him, whom He loved above all of His earthly creation.  It is by drawing close to Mary, who always leads us to the truths of her Son, that our faith transcends believing in His promises to knowing that He is really present in our lives.

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