On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but of the dawn. – G.K. Chesterton

It must have been about 20 years ago. A rather dour perspective had infused my outlook on life in general, resulting in a sharp demeanor and a rather acidic tongue. I was routinely working 70 hours each week, dividing my time between my military duties and another job I had taken performing watch repair. Exhaustion was my closest companion, necessitated by the requirements of child support, which I did not begrudge in the least. I just needed a little rest, and none was forthcoming.

It was a Sunday, when I manned the shop by myself and people would, naturally, come into the little store in a great cattle rush. There was one lady whom I will never forget because she nearly helped me lose what little religion I had left at that point. “You shouldn’t be working today,” she said while handing me her broken watch. I must have looked stressed to her. In fact, I’m pretty sure I looked stressed, since the sight of a stampede of broken watch people charging at me on a Sunday afternoon nearly always darkened my spirits.

“Why shouldn’t I be working today?” I asked.

“Because it’s Sunday,” she answered, “and Sunday is a day of rest.”

“But you came in here on a day of rest expecting your watch to be repaired, so evidently somebody has to do it,” I replied.

“Are you a Christian?” she asked.

“Yes, I am.”

“Then you shouldn’t be working today,” she continued.

I thought for a moment, and privately conceded that she had a good point. But my dour perspective soon rescued me from serious introspection and I replied, “Well, I have a lot of bills to pay, and so I have no choice.”

“Ah,” she answered triumphantly, “God pays your bills.”

“Well He’s late on several of them,” I shot back, “and the bill collectors keep calling me instead.”

She took her freshly repaired watch, and I layered my resentment with a fresh coat of darkest resentment. I write all this not to glory in the sharp remarks of another time, for they were ill-informed and worse reasoned. I was tired and uncharitable.

Still, I find that this Easter morning caps off a Holy Week in which I’ve been unable to attend a single Mass or activity, for I was yet again at work during each of these activities every single day of the week. The Chrism Mass, beautifully arranged and offered by the Bishop, took place while I was enroute back from someplace, capping off a 14-hour work day. Ditto with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, during which I was negotiating little mountain roads on the way back from a trip that was less like a truck delivery and more like a Lewis and Clark expedition. While Good Friday observances were held, it was all I could do to hold my tongue from making any number of searing observations about the goodwill ambassadors of Memphis who express their affection for their fellow human beings by trying to run them off the road and into the ditch — which, by the way, is overflowing with water because Cecil B. DeMille has apparently been placed in charge of Memphis weather for lo the last several months rendering the place a muddy, swampy, spongy mess that resembles a…. I’m getting carried away again.

All of which entirely misses the point. We all have challenges, yes? And the incessant grumbling and whining emanating from a comfortable home and a nicely appointed study where I’m currently free to tap out my thoughts and memories, my musings and ideas on this, the “first day of a new creation,” to use Chesterton’s words, is worse than dour. It’s more akin to an adolescent imbecility. Two sentences ago, I wrote that we all have “challenges,” because I caught myself almost writing instead that we all have our “crosses,” as if any of the privations or small sacrifices I’ve been called to make in any way compare with the monstrous burden of the One who willingly took on all of my wrongs, indeed, all the sins of the world upon Himself, and died a death so cruel and inhuman that the mere sight of a cross in those times struck fear into the hearts and minds of everyone.

“We are all worms,” Winston Churchill quipped, “but I do believe that I am a glowworm.” Well at least he glowed and, in Churchill’s case, it’s a remarkable exception that saved Europe specifically and much of the west generally. Still, it’s a rather small distinction when viewed by the light of the Cross.

Today, Easter, is a glorious day indeed. At Easter Mass this morning, our priest pointed out that after His resurrection Christ appeared numerous times to specific people, even appearing in rooms whose entrances had been secured, and even appearing in two places simultaneously. Surely then, the stone at His tomb would not have held him on that first Easter morning. Thus, the priest explained, the stone rolled away was not to let the risen Christ out, but to let us in.

In a 1987 article, the late D. Keith Mano wrote in National Review:

Simon of Cyrene, recruited by grace and some Roman to lug Jesus’ cross, is my paradigm in this. He had, it would seem, no previous experience for the work. No moral credentials that we hear about. Just a man “who passed by, coming out of the country.” To trade, to sightsee, to window-shop: another tourist in the Big Fig. And, all at once, he is absorbed by that rubbernecking mob. Elbow to the front — what have we here? And it’s you, yes you. Bozo, pack that wood. We know nothing about Simon, except that his children, Rufus and Alexander, became Christians. On Good Friday, Simon was what we all are, a passerby. And shanghaied by the Holy Spirit. I take comfort in this thought, whose life otherwise does not much recommend itself to God. That I may be granted, through His fierce randomness and my mere availability, a walk-on moment of redemption.

A walk-on moment. Yes, exactly. And for those who have eyes to see, a walk-in moment to behold the empty tomb. On the day after the world died, Creation is new, and with that regeneration comes a sense of profound gratitude for the offer of salvation. A salvation undeserved, certainly, but a gift from the Creator of the universe.