New Creation, continued from page 3
clearly an early riser and already about the work of the
resurrection when Mary arrived at the tomb.
In Mark’s version of the story, Mary Magdalene is ac-
companied by Mary, the mother of James, and Salome.
They bring spices to the cemetery but are worried how
they would remove the large stone that was rolled in
front of the tomb to get inside and anoint the body of
Jesus. When they arrive at the tomb, they discover the
stone has already been rolled away.
Taking a deep breath to brace themselves, they enter
the tomb. They are expecting to be overwhelmed with
the smell of death. But instead they are amazed to see
not Jesus but “a young man…clothed in a white robe”
who tells them, “Do not be amazed! You seek Jesus of
Nazareth, the crucified. He has been raised up; he is not
here.” The young man tells the women that this isn’t a
joke! If they did not believe him, look around and see
for themselves: “Behold the place where they laid him.”
But after they look around, they are must “go and tell
the others” for the work of resurrection has begun.
“This is resurrection,” David Wade writes. “It is a
stirring to life that which was slumbering. It was saying
to the oblivious, the distracted, the apathetic, ‘Wake up!’
Awaken, sleepers, for there is only one moment, one life
in which to live and it is now.”
The work of the resurrection begins in the darkness
of a tomb, damp and dreary, a place of death. But from
this place where once there was the stench of decay, the
scents of new life emerge. The tomb is empty! The work
of the new creation begins.
At the first meeting of the New Creation
Commission in Chicago in February, the group dis-
cerned how the work to which we are called is to
create something new. In his book, Religious Life in the
21st Century: The Prospect of Refounding, Diarmuid
O’Murchu writes that our “most formidable task”
is to ask ourselves, “What is it that we seek first?” If
the paradigm is to seek first the kingdom of God—
what O’Murchu refers to as the “Companionship of
Empowerment”—what implications does this have for
our new creation?
When O’Murchu writes of this Companionship of
Empowerment, it sounds like the spirituality of the
4 • The New Wine Press • April 2018
Precious Blood because this “gospe