‘He is Risen’ -what joyous message!

Thepfulhouvi Solo

 

To come out alive from ‘the Jaws of death’ is a momentous occasion  to remember in anyone’s life and indeed a thankfully joyous Boris Johnson said he owes his life to the Doctors and Nurses that saved him from possible Death with Covid-19.

 

To see a person nobler, higher, more magnanimous and heavenly than mere mortals crucified to death and see him  risen from his grave, is inexplicable wonderment.

 

Two simple women on the first Sunday after first Friday; after first full Moon; after the first equinox of 21st March in 33 AD; had such an experience. They were on their way to the tomb of an uncommon person; buried just the previous Friday; on the outskirt of Jerusalem on the hillside called Golgatha.

 

Joseph of Arimathea “went boldly to Pilat” and asked the permission from the Roman Governor to take the body of  Jesus’ for burial. The Governor allowed him after necessary enquiries and Joseph of Arimathea took down the dead body, rolled it in a cloth recorded as “linen” costly today as at that time.

 

The two women, one Mary Magdalene and the other recorded as “the other Mary” -mother of Jacob and Joses- followed Joseph of Arimathea to the grave prepared for his own use on the rocky hillside and placed the body there. Then he rolled a big stone at the mouth of the grave.

 

The two women knew where the Grave is located. The Gospel Writer Mark recorded they “bought” the spices “when the Sabbath [Saturday] was over” [Mk. 16: 1]. So the purchase could have been made after the “Sabbath was over” and before sunrise of the first day of the Week.

 

It is Mark alone who has given the Time reference of “sunrise” of the morning. Mark recorded it was: “just after sunrise”; Mathew and Luke mentions “very early in the morning”. Probably the spices were bought just before sunrise; perhaps from someone the women knew! It was to anoint the body of Jesus to preserve it for more days in the fast growing hotter in the Spring Season.

 

The Spices were procured just at the exact time it was required like the Earthquake Mathew mentioned rolled away the stone, when the women were on their way to the Grave and were worried who would roll it away from the mouth of the Tomb so that they could perform the anointment.

 

Mathew the ex-tax Collector-follower of Jesus recorded that a violent earthquake occurred as the women were on their way to the tomb; “for”, he said: “an Angel of the Lord came down from heaven and going to the tomb. There is nothing more brilliantly brighter than lightning  in the natural world and Mathew wrote that the Angel shone like lighting and his clothes were as white as Snow; the whitest material in the world.

 

Mathew recorded:

 

“The guards were so afraid of him [the Angel] that they shook and became like dead men”; but he spoke to the women not to be afraid and that he knows that they were seeking  for Jesus. He said to them:

 

“He is risen.” What  joyous message to all mankind!