“But Mary Magdalene and the other Mary
remained sitting there, facing the tomb.”

Toward the end of the Passion Gospel from this year’s Palm Sunday there is a simple sentence: “But Mary Magdalene and the other Mary remained sitting there, facing the tomb.” I have spent many years serving Mother Church, but this was the first time I remember that line from St. Matthew’s Passion sticking with me.

But the theme continued as I worked my way through Holy Week and the Sacred Paschal Triduum this year. In my pastor’s homily on Easter Sunday, he mentioned the need for faith. He explained that it’s easy to believe when things are tangible, like Jesus’s resurrection for Mary and the Apostles, but it is our faith that makes us believe in the truth of it. We choose to live in faith or to walk away. Was I akin to those women from the Passion Gospel? Do I walk away from God when it’s hard to feel His presence?

So, I gave myself time to understand why those messages were resonating…

It seems that many of us lack that patience of faith. Faith is defined by Merriam-Webster in three ways, but secondly as a belief and trust in, and loyalty to, God. Trust and loyalty work in tandem. You cannot trust someone unless they prove some kind of loyalty to you. We have seen all those quotes all over social media, all revolving around this theme – Respect is earned. Honesty is appreciated. Trust is gained. Loyalty is returned. 

Imagine the two Mary’s. There, after witnessing a very horrible and public act of violence to a man they loved and believed in, they just sat and prayed. They did not carry on or get tired of waiting, unlike the apostles in the Garden of Gethsemane. They did not cause a public outcry of it being unfair or because he was different. They did not decide they were done believing because His resurrection was not immediate, as we tend to do in current times. They truly practiced patience. They remained sitting, facing the tomb, believing that they’d see Jesus again.

Listening to that Gospel and that homily made me realize that I do believe, whole-heartedly, but that there are moments in my life that my general lack of patience  bleeds into how I live my faith. Would I be like the Marys, who patiently sat and waited? Not really. I often associate my patience with the likes of holy people like St. Thomas. I constantly feel like I need proof. There needs to be a tangibility in those hardest moments.

Now, in this Easter season, it’s time for me to be better. A true trust in God requires faith AND patience. They go hand in hand. This is not to be read like those one-bite quotes that float all over, because it is deeper than that. The idea of a pastor going up and making a simple, one sentence proclamation to sum up faith is as superficial as people who think they have fallen in love with some fly by night person of the moment. There is a necessary deepness. Faith is the furthest thing from superficial. In those dark, scary moments in our lives, we must still believe that God exists in our lives. We need to have faith and live it, with loyalty to Christ and His teachings, making an honest effort to do so. This requires trust and love. Faith in God is based around love. A deep, unrelenting love that cannot be fully fathomable by humans. In love comes a need for loyalty and patience. It’s time to be like the Marys, and patiently wait for and listen to God and His plan in my life. How about you?