When Easter morning arrived, someone was missing. That someone is the very linchpin of the salvation story. That someone is the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is nowhere to be seen or heard. Where was she?

We will hear from the Gospel of John 20:1-9 how

Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciples He loved and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we do not know where they have put Him.”

So where was Our Lady when Jesus rose from the dead? She was His mother. She was nearby throughout the Passion and watched Him carry His cross. She watched as they drove the nails through His hands and His feet. She stood agonizingly and helplessly by as He was raised on the cross. For three hours she stood there watching every drop of blood leave her boy’s body. She was at the foot of the cross when He died.

The following week, on the Second Sunday of Easter ( Divine Mercy Sunday), the Gospel is once again from John, this time 20: 19-31. This is when, with the doors locked, Jesus appears to all of them (except “doubting” Thomas). Once again, the Mother of our Savior is never mentioned. Why is that?

No mom should ever have to witness such cruelty heaped upon her own child. Who could have loved Him more than she? Doesn’t it seem absolutely unquestionable that the first person who Jesus appeared to after He rose was His Mother? Yet there is not a single mention of the Blessed Virgin in the Resurrection narratives.

In the year 431 A.D, the Council of Ephesus affirmed the Dogma of the Divine Maternity. This explains to us that the greatness and majesty that was bestowed on Our Lady was wrapped into a bundle of pure Love from God. He was the Father of her child. She was the mom. Every drop of Jesus’s DNA comes from His mom. The Father and Son are God. Jesus Christ is truly Human and Divine, separate yet one. Yet she is not mentioned in the Resurrection Gospel readings.

From the CCC 496: Mary’s Virginity:

From the first formulations of her faith, the Church has confessed that Jesus was conceived solely by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, affirming also the corporeal aspect of this event: Jesus was conceived “by the Holy Spirit without human seed.” The Fathers see in the virginal conception the sign that it truly was the Son of God who came in a humanity like our own …

Back to the question: Where was our Blessed Mother, the Mother of the Risen Christ, her only Child, on Easter Sunday? We can turn this question over to none other than St. John Paul II. The Holy Father, speaking from Vatican City on May 21, 1997, said:

The unique and special character of the presence of the Virgin at Calvary and her perfect union with the Son in his suffering on the Cross seem to postulate a very particular participation on her part in the mystery of the Resurrection.

The Blessed Virgin, who was present at Calvary and at the Cenacle,

was probably a privileged witness to the Resurrection of Christ, in this way completing her participation in all the essential moments of the paschal mystery. Embracing the risen Jesus, Mary is, in addition, a sign and an anticipation of humanity, which hopes to reach its fulfillment through the resurrection of the dead. (emphasis mine)

If St. John Paul II said she was there, she was there. AMEN.

Copyright 2019 Larry Peterson