The evangelist John sets his Easter Gospel “early in the morning, while it was still dark” (John 20:1). Mary of Magdala is on her way to visit the tomb. It is “still dark” for Mary this Easter morning; she has just lost the one she loved most in all the world. What is this grieving woman going to do?
We know the answer from our own life experience, and it is right here as we step more fully into this Easter Gospel. Where do the mothers and widows of Palestine or Israel go today? Where do the mothers and widows of our own deployed military go today?
The answer is found right here. John suggests Mary is going simply to be there—at the tomb of her loss. But to her shock, what does Mary see? Mary “saw the stone removed” (John 20:1) from the now-opened tomb!
I want Mary of Magdala to hear the words of our Father, St. Bernard, in his first sermon for Easter. “We should ponder in diligent thought,” Bernard writes, “what it is that is especially commended to us by this glorious solemnity of Easter. As for myself, I take it to be three things: 1) a resurrection, 2) a passage, and 3) a transmigration. For Christ has not fallen back today, but has risen; He has not returned, but passed on. Now, however, having Himself passed on to a newness of life, He invites us also to make the same passage; He summons us to Galilee…”
St. Bernard is reflecting here on the earliest oral tradition of the Easter Proclamation. Just to touch the empty tomb is transmigrating for the human heart. Just to breathe the air of that empty tomb is to turn all our perspectives upside down and inside out. It is the invasion of a vast world—so unlike our own—a world where love triumphs. Jesus called it the Kingdom of God.
And so, Mary of Magdala, the apostle to the Apostles, proclaims the message of Jesus to the eleven. Peter and John rush to the tomb, and so the Risen Savior unites these scattered deserters—calls them His brothers—and sends them on a journey together.
Where? Not to some exotic destination, but to “return to Galilee.” To enter again into your everyday life, but now with me and for others… that is what it means to return to Galilee. You will see me there.
Earliest tradition has it that Peter, John, and the others first returned to fishing—but it was all different now. They were a community called together, breakfasting on the shore with the Risen One!
Fr. Peter McCarthy, OCSO Abbot Emeritis, Guadalupe Abbey, Carlton Or.
Excerpts from Easter Sunday Homily, April 5, 2026
