Easter happened silently. There was no sound. No one realized anything was happening, no one at all, except for the One who had just united heaven and earth.
There were no angels sounding trumpets around the skies, no thunderbolts, no earthquakes (in John’s Gospel. Matthew is more keen on the special effects).
Later in the morning Mary showed up and thought she had bumped into the gardener. The disciples immediately worried that someone had stolen his body, as though things could get any worse. No one realized anything had happened.
Easter isn’t something that was announced. As John realized, Easter had to be discovered. It isn’t given to us, we have to go find it, figure it out.
We are used to Easter being a big feast. It’s the most important feast day in the Church’s year. Sometimes when something is taken away it helps us see more clearly what was there all the time.
Maybe we have become too comfortable with the Easter that arrives every year. Maybe we have come to expect an Easter with joy and hugs, greetings and laughter. There will be joy and hugs, greeting and laughter, maybe in this life and with some in the next. But for now we have to discover Easter again.
And where do we find it? How do we find it? We are trapped at home with a rising death toll around us. We see the inadequacy of all we have planned for, the failure of so many hopes and expectations.
In John’s account, Easter was discovered in the recognition of an old friend and teacher, a meal, a gentle reminder that he told us it would be like this.
When we give an extra smile to someone in the supermarket; or contain our impatience at the person blocking the aisle who can’t decide which brand of yogurt to buy; or call a friend we haven’t spoken to for a long time and aren’t sure what to say; or decide to plant a garden, or sing a song, or watch the sunset – that’s when we start to discover Easter. And the discovery is never over, because what we are discovering has no end.
And then we realize that we aren’t discovering anything – we are allowing him to discover us. He opens us up, He unfolds us like a flower, He makes us His face to shine on the world. Then it is Easter.