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Chapter XIV
Easter morning
I say to thee, arise. Mark 5, 41.
I wake up and behold You are with me. On waking up, I feel Your Presence which enlivens me. I feel Your love enveloping me.

This evokes the many times Your disciples awoke in the days of Your earthly pilgrimage. I know these Galilean dawns, on the shore of the lake, between Tiberias and Capharnaum very well.

The birds sing so loudly that I cannot even hear. The sun has not yet appeared. But it already casts a silvery trail of light on the singing waves of the rippling sea.

Once your disciples are awake they anticipate the new day in the joy of knowing that they will walk behind You and that each hour spent with You will be a fascination and a discovery. Those same promises of mornings at Galilee are offered to me each time I wake up. “Again today, I shall follow Him . . .”

More than these wakings of Your disciples, Your own wakings should lend their substance to mine. Master, when You woke up, Your first movement could be only to the Father: “I will arise and will go to my Father.”

The statement which the parable attributes to the prodigal son assumed on Your lips a very special, a truly unique meaning. You went – although You were already and always with Him – to a Father from whom You had never been separated by any kind of failure.

I cannot utter this sentence as You alone could. I can go to the Father only as a guilty, repentant son, dying of starvation, shaken to the very depths of my being by a conscious-smitten shock – the realization that what I had forsaken was absolute Goodness, and that what I had been brought to envy was “the husks the swine did eat.”

It is not enough that this conscious-stricken state produce in me a vague frustration, a nostalgia. It must strike me like a whip whose sting reaches the very marrow of my being. Then I shall have experienced sorrow. Lord, from daybreak, invite me to repentance.

Breathe Your Spirit upon me. Take me by the hand. Lead me to the Father.

And behold the Father and the Spirit send You Yourself to me as the bearer of forgiveness, as the messenger of hope. The elder son, in the parable of the prodigal son, was jealous of his brother and angered against him.

But today, from the moment I awake, the elder Son, the only Son – who is also my elder Brother, - comes to look for me and welcomes me on behalf of the Father.

O my Saviour, even before I get up You are there. You want me. “O hear my Beloved, calling me and knocking at my door . . . My Beloved put His hand through the window and my heart beat for Him . . .” “Behold He standeth behind our wall, looking through the windows, looking through the lattices. My Beloved speaketh to me: Arise.”

Lord Jesus, each new day is a rendezvous which You give me. At this rendezvous, You always arrive first. May each day begin then for me by the longing for this meeting, by the longing for an increase in knowledge and love! May each waking hour bring me first of all the joy and promise of Your Presence!

Jesus, I know that You are there and that You take me in Your arms. But I cannot, I must not forget those who are not aware of You, those whose awakenings are not enlightened and rekindled by Your light – by the rising of the true Sun. The pale dawns of those who suffer, who are going to die.

The anguish of the condemned to death who are counting the hours, the anxieties of those who know not how they will eat today, how they will feed their children. The fatigue and bitterness of those who, in the darkness of the early morning, leave for their hard work.

The sinner awakening, with his bitter aftertaste. All that, O Lord, all those men and women whom You know and on whom You take pity. Unite my soul to the compassion which you have for them and to Your will not to allow this day to pass without some divine help being invisibly offered to them.

Master, You draw near to me and You say to me as to the daughter of Jairus: “Arise.” Taking her by the hand, You called her back to life. The child, whom they believed dead, at once got up and began to walk. And behold through the daily act of awakening I catch a glimpse of the mystery and power of the Resurrection.

You too arose. You left the sleep of the dead. You arose, living and glorious. And the glory of Your Resurrection remains established on each one of our mornings.

The first day of the week, Mary Magdalen and Mary, the mother of James and Salome, went to the tomb. It was “very early in the morning . . . the sun being now risen,” Lord, let no new morning come to enlighten my life without directing my thoughts towards Your Resurrection and without my going in spirit to the empty tomb in the garden!

It is the Risen Christ who comes to me each day at dawn. Whatever my perplexities or dangers may be, the beginning of all my days will be radiant if I recall – but with my whole soul, with my whole mind – that my Saviour has overcome the powers of evil and death. My first act of faith each morning will be an act of faith in Your final victory. “Love is strong as death . . . The lamps thereof are fire and flames . . . Many waters cannot quench charity, neither can the floods drown it.”

Do you believe that, My child? – I do believe it, Lord. – Then, My child, there can be no room in your soul for any affliction, for any fear – unless it be the fear of losing Me who am Your life.

Lord Jesus, each day can thus be for me “the first day of the week,” the feast of the Resurrection. Therefore let each morning be for me Easter morning!

I am writing these lines in Jerusalem, on Easter Sunday morning, in that garden, where, for so many years, You have given me so much and which I imagine to be so like the one where You were placed in the new tomb.

Among the palms and flowers, near that stone which the sun makes very hot, I think I see the woman who wept, stooped over the tomb, and I look upon the scene described by the Gospel. Mary is looking for you. She speaks to the man whom she takes for the gardener. “She turned herself back.” She sees You: “and she knew not that it was Jesus.” And only when You say to her “Mary!” does she turn again and, recognizing You, she cries out: “Rabboni! Master!”

This episode illustrates the nature of the final conversion. Mary is seeking You. But she seeks You according to the ideas already formed in her. She clings to it. And that is why she is unable to recognize You as You now show Yourself to her. Twice she turned towards You – and “conversion” signifies precisely the act of “turning oneself” – and only the second time, when she hears her name, does she become conscious of Your Presence.

I do not know how many mornings You will delight in my waking up again. I do not know whether I shall hear again the Easter bells in Jerusalem.

Nevertheless I beg You to grant me that it might always be for me, secretly, the garden of Jerusalem and Easter morning. And may each day, each awakening which brings me the joy of Easter, bring me also the deepest conversion – the one by which I shall turn from Your image of yesterday towards Your image of today!

In each situation and in each person let me know how to recognize You, such as You want to be known this very day, not as You appeared to me yesterday, but as You show Yourself now! A conversion and uprooting which are not without violence, but which You demand.

These new persons and new situations through whom I shall turn again to you can be very diverse. May each one of my awakenings be an awakening in Your so diversified Presence – a “paschal” meeting with “Christ in the garden,” that Christ once so unexpected!

May each episode of the day be a moment in which I hear You call me by my name, as You called Mary! Give me then the grace to turn towards You. Give me too the grace to answer with one word, to say this one word to You (but with all my heart): “Master!”