The Resurrection of Jesus Christ
The angel cried to her that is full of grace: O pure Virgin, rejoice! And again I say, rejoice! Thy Son is risen from the tomb on the third day and hath raised the dead; ye people, be joyful! Christ is risen!
You will find nowhere in the Gospel a direct statement that Mary full of grace saw her Son and Lord after His resurrection from the dead. But the writings of the holy fathers and the hymns of the Church bear witness that His All-holy Mother saw Him before the other believers and rejoiced in the resurrection.
“Having beheld thy Son and God risen from the tomb on the third day, thou didst rejoice with the apostles, O holy one full of divine grace!”
So a hymn of the holy Church assures us. Of the conception and birth of the Son of God the All-holy Virgin received the angel’s tidings from the Lord. And the joyful news of the resurrection too she heard first. The Evangelists do not speak of this openly, because they do not wish to put forward the testimony of the Mother, for fear of giving unbelievers occasion for doubt. This explains the scarcity of information on this point in the Gospel, although one senses that the divine words of the Evangelists flow from a single source, for “his mother kept all these sayings in her heart”. Besides, the part the All-holy Virgin had in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, as in every other circumstance of His life, is so natural that there seems to have been no need to mention it, especially since in her deep humility the Mother of God did not allow the disciples to speak of her. In her love for her Son and God she never grew weary.
Deprived of the nearness of her Son, the All-holy Mary lived in expectation of His resurrection; everything said by the Saviour and about Him she bore in her heart. Anointed with divine grace, she was the first to learn to believe His words; it was she who testified before the apostles that Jesus Christ had not died for ever, that He would rise again, deliver the race of men from death and lead it to life eternal; her faith was destined to be fulfilled!
Church tradition bears witness that Jesus Christ, after His resurrection from the dead, appeared first of all to His All-holy Mother. The same tradition tells that after the burial the Theotokos spent the whole Sabbath and the day before it near the tomb, in the house of the Arimathean, and that here after the resurrection the Saviour appeared to her before anyone else. The Theotokos was the first to see and know the risen Saviour, and she became the apostle of His apostles. She was the first to grasp the whole majesty of the events that had taken place: the great earthquake, the opening of the graves, the darkening of the sun, the guards struck as dead, the rolling away of the stone, the empty tomb, the angel’s tidings. All this was the fulfilment of her great faith and expectation that she would see her Son and God risen from the dead.
The Gospel says that when Joseph with Nicodemus had laid His body in the tomb and closed the entrance with a stone, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there (Matt. 27:61). According to the interpretation of the holy fathers, by “the other Mary” the Evangelist means the All-holy Virgin Mary.
Having beheld the resurrection of thy Son and God, thou didst rejoice with the apostles, O thou full of divine grace!..
