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Steve Herrmann's avatar

There is something profoundly true—and profoundly unsettling—in the way you have stripped Easter of its pageantry to reveal again its trembling, human heart. We are too often tempted to demand from the Resurrection a final, triumphant chord, a blinding certitude that spares us from the trembling in our knees. But the first Easter was not a coronation—it was a wound turned inside out, a light so fierce and strange that even the faithful fled from it in terror.

You have named, with a clear and sorrowful eye, what we prefer to forget: that Easter’s victory is not a conquest but a transformation, not the obliteration of weakness but its transfiguration. Christ does not rise with the swagger of a general; He rises with the quiet, aching authority of one who has known the grave from the inside, and carries its scar still burning in His flesh.

And this, too, is the secret that incarnational mysticism, which I explore in Desert and Fire, whispers to those willing to listen: that the Resurrection is not merely a distant historical event or a future cosmic promise, but a living sap now running through the veins of the world. That in the trembling hands of women at the tomb, in the half-frightened recognition of bread broken on the road to Emmaus, in the worn sandals of a pope who stoops to wash the feet of prisoners—there, already, Easter breathes.

God has always chosen the trembling vessel, the broken reed, the pierced side as the means of His rising. He still does. Resurrection is not a crushing of the human story but its infusion; not the erasure of our wounds but their strange and shining fulfillment. The same Christ who stood weeping outside Lazarus’ tomb rises now not to erase sorrow but to fill it with an indestructible hope—a hope so fragile that it must be carried with shaking hands, yet so strong that not even death can overthrow it.

It is easy to miss it, of course. Easier to demand certainty, easier still to surrender to despair. But the Resurrection comes to us like the morning mist on the fields: soft, almost imperceptible, waiting for those who have learned, painfully, to see with the heart.

You have helped us see again—not a Resurrection of shouting banners, but a Resurrection stitched quietly into the trembling fabric of our frailty. A Resurrection that bids us not to escape the world, but to dwell in it more deeply, carrying in our bodies the dying of the Lord, that His rising may also shine through us.

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Mark Longhurst's avatar

Beautifully put, Steve! Thanks for reading and for sharing your wisdom.

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Steve Utts's avatar

I love this. I have been pondering the chaos and confusion of Easter morning. There was no triumph or victory. No “He is Risen Indeed!”. Mary wasn’t believed and a couple of disciples were out of town, still in Emmaus. There was much teaching left to do through his teaching body. They had to learn to see through a deeper gaze. It is what We are charged to do as well.

This is a keeper

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Mark Longhurst's avatar

So well said, Steve, thanks.

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