While it was Still Dark
On the first Easter morning, before the sun had risen, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb while it was still dark. That detail has always stuck with me. While it was still dark. She didn’t wait for daylight, clarity, or courage. She went carrying her grief, confusion, and love. When she arrived, nothing made sense. The stone was rolled away. The body was gone. She ran to the disciples not with joy but with fear: ‘They have taken the Lord, and we don’t know where they put him.’
The first experience of the Resurrection didn’t feel like a resurrection at all. It felt like more loss upon loss. It felt confusing. It felt like darkness. And yet—resurrection was already happening.
In Matthew’s Gospel, the story is told differently. Mary Magdalene and ‘the other Mary’ go to the tomb, and the ground shakes beneath their feet. An angel descends like lightning, rolls back the stone, and sits on it as calmly as someone sitting on a bench. The guards tremble. The women fall to the ground. And the angel says the words heaven always says, “Do not be afraid.”
Two stories. Two very different experiences—one quiet, one dramatic. One filled with confusion, the other with awe. Yet in both, resurrection begins before anyone notices it. I believe that is the heart of what Easter means for us this year.
These past few weeks in our parish have been heavy. We have been walking through our own kind of darkness. Like Mary Magdalene, we have found ourselves standing at the edge of something unexpected, unwanted, and hard to understand. And yet—Easter comes anyway.
The Gospels tell us that even when the disciples didn’t understand, even as they walked away from Jerusalem with their heads down, resurrection was already happening. Jesus was already alive. Hope was already loose in the world.
But here is the part that comforts me the most: over and over, the risen Jesus approaches people who do not recognize him.
Mary Magdalene mistakes him for the gardener. The disciples on the road to Emmaus walk miles beside him without realizing who he is. The apostles, fishing on the Sea of Galilee, see a man on the shore and don’t recognize that it is the Lord until their nets are overflowing.
Resurrection isn’t obvious. It doesn’t arrive with angels and earthquakes. Sometimes it happens quietly, disguised as something ordinary. Sometimes it occurs slowly, in ways we only realize later. It often comes in the darkness. But it comes.
And if our hearts remain open—open to love, open to God, open to the possibility that life is more powerful than death—we will recognize it. Maybe not right away. Maybe not in the way we expect. The risen Christ has a way of finding us, calling our name, breaking bread with us, walking beside us while our hearts are still weary.
Easter is not a promise that we will never grieve. It is the promise that death does not have the final word. It is the promise that love is stronger than the grave. It is the promise that God who raised Jesus from the dead is still at work in this world, still rolling away stones, still calling us out of darkness into light.
And it is also the quiet promise—one we hold close to our hearts—that we will see those we love again. Not only in memory, not only in longing, but in the fullness of God’s love. Easter stretches our hope beyond what we can see and reminds us that the bonds of love do not end at death. They are held in the hands of God, who brings life out of every tomb.
So this Easter, as we gather with both joy and sorrow, may we trust that resurrection is already happening among us. Even if we do not yet see it. Even if it arrives in unexpected ways. May our hearts remain open to the God who meets us in the garden, on the road, at the table, and in every place where love refuses to die.
Christ is risen. And because He lives, hope lives too.
In God’s Unending Love,
—Gwen Coté
