Though we have no record of Mary Magdalene's thoughts that Sunday morning so many years ago, I imagine that she, like anyone who had recently lost a loved one, had a number of conflicting emotions. Anticipation and hope, since Mary, as a constant follower of Jesus, would have believed - and wanted to believe - that he would rise from the dead, as he had promised; relief, because Jesus' suffering had come to an end; sorrow and fear, because after all she had seen him undergo a painful and ignominious death and now she ran the risk of marking herself as loyal to a "dangerous criminal."
Mary must have been thinking also of her own loss: How would her life be changed by the death of her teacher? And would Jesus ever know of, or appreciate, her visit to his tomb? Thus preoccupied, still she went. Whether her presence was noticed or not, useful or not, dangerous or not, she wanted to be near the Lord she loved.
Mary Magdalene's faith and love, attested to by the simple act of visiting Jesus' tomb, were rewarded: She was graced by the privilege of being witness to his Resurrection and trusted with the task of bearing word of it to his disciples. While none of us will be blessed in exactly the same way, her story exemplifies that the risen Lord will reward our humble acts of faith.
And for many of us who, like the father begging Jesus to heal his son, are moved to exclaim, "Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief" (Mark 9:24), there is perhaps a deeper message: Unworthy and inadequate as we often feel when faced with the challenge of witnessing to our faith, the Lord will take and build on the efforts we make, however small or seemingly useless they may be. If we look, each of us can find, and be inspired by, people in our own time who give testament to this encouraging fact.
In recent years some such witnesses have come to our attention. Though known mostly because of their deaths, the four U.S. churchwomen murdered in El Salvador in December 1980 have left us a gift in the message of their lives. From their friends, their families, and the letters they wrote, we know they weren't always certain they could meet the challenges that faced them, or that the simple things they did were of much help to those they tried to serve. But their hope prevailed over their questions.
A clue to the perseverance of these women is found in these words of Sister Maura Clarke: "If we leave the people when they suffer the cross, how credible is our word to them? The Church's role is to accompany those who suffer the most, and to witness to our hope in the resurrection."
A few years earlier, Sister Ita Ford, another of the martyrs, had described what they - and we - face as well: "The challenge we live daily is to enter into the paschal mystery with faith. Am I willing to suffer with the people here, the suffering of the powerless? Can I say to my neighbors, 'I have no solution to this situation; I don't know the answers, but I will walk with you, search with you, be with you?'"
Can any of us doubt that these women, and countless others who have lived and died making the effort to give witness to their faith, are at rest with the Lord?
MOST OF US WILL ACT ON THE FAITH THAT we have in obscurity, and many will do so with little support or acknowledgment. A large number in our day are called to do so at great risk to themselves. I think of people like Nely, my hostess during Holy Week of 1984, in a little Nicaraguan village called El Limon. Like all Nicaraguan women, she feared daily for her children, and for her husband, Tonio, who, as a delegate of the Word, was marked as a community leader and was thus a likely target for the contras.
Yet Nely worked tirelessly, and joyfully, for the sake of others. In a quiet, yet valiant, way, she stood with family, friends, neighbors, and visiting strangers. Like men and women throughout the world, Nely knew in her heart as well as in her head that the way to the resurrection was through the crucifixion. And her faith led her to follow Christ, whatever the cost.
As we are reminded in the letter of James, "Faith is like that: if good works do not go with it, it is quite dead" (James 2:17). The apostle Paul told us, "If I have faith in all its fullness, to move mountains, but without love, then I am nothing at all" (1 Corinthians 13:2). Teresa of Avila wrote, "Let everyone understand that real love of God does not consist of tear-shedding, nor in that sweetness or tenderness for which usually we long, just because they console us, but in serving God in justice, fortitude and humility."
Putting all of these things together is difficult, without a doubt. All of us fall short on a regular basis. Yet what is important, and possible more often than we might think, is that each of us who has faith in Christ's redemption persists in efforts to proclaim his love for us through our lives. As Jesus did with Mary Magdalene, the first witness of the resurrection, our Lord will take the seeds of our faith and multiply them a hundredfold.
Peggy Scherer was working with an adult literacy and English-as-a-second-language program in Brooklyn, New York, when this article appeared.
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