While It Is Still Dark

Reflection for April 5, 2026 – Easter Sunday

In today’s Gospel, we learn about the happenings after Mary of Magdala and the disciples found Jesus’ tombstone rolled away and the tomb empty. Find today’s reading here.  

If you are a person who is religious in any way, chances are that at some point, someone has asked you to give a reason why.

I meet lots of people who identify as spiritual but not religious, lots of people who are more comfortable splashing in the shallow end of belief but hesitating to wade into the more uncertain depths of doctrine. So, when they ask the question “Why do you believe what you believe?” it usually comes out as “Why do you go to church?”

They want to know why I come to this specific place at this specific time. What am I expecting to happen?

We read that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb “while it was still dark.” I imagine she could not sleep. She was traumatized. Grieving. Confused. Angry, perhaps. Doubting? Maybe. It’s possible. We cannot know what was in her heart.

We only know what she did. We only know where she went. And we know that it was dark, that the light of Easter’s dawn had not yet pierced the sky.

Often, I am grieving when I go to church, or angry, or confused, or all three. I have gone many times with a doubting and resentful heart.

Because, you see, it is still dark. The dawn of eternity, which will illuminate all understanding, has not yet even begun to creep across my horizon.

My answer to the question, when I am asked, is that I go to church — to Catholic Mass, specifically — for the same reason Mary Magdalene went to the tomb. I go because it is the last place I saw Christ, and I am desperate to see him again.

©LPi