Let

“So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council, and said, ‘What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on thus, everyone will believe in him.’” (John 11:56).

Saint Mary Magdalene (Walters Art Museum)

Mary Magdalene had been possessed of seven Evil Spirits.  And just as people were ready to stone her for committing the sin of adultery, Christ intervened and saved her life.  And not only did He save her physical life – and save her from that stoning – He accepted her contrition and forgave her sins.  And as a result of this, most importantly, Christ saved Mary Magdalene’s eternal life…

And afterwards, people who had seen Mary Magdalene before Christ’s intervention and again seen her after it, could see the difference in her.  And still, many of them refused to believe that Christ was God…

“Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him; but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council, and said, ‘What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on thus, everyone will believe in him.’” (John 11:45-56).

Later, when Christ raised Lazarus from the dead, the Pharisees plotted to kill Him.  So little did they believe in anything bigger than themselves, that they literally killed the source of that miracle to try to disempower it…  They also plotted against Lazarus – they wanted to kill him so that they could hide the evidence of Christ’s power.  Because they could not defeat that power or the GOODNESS of God, and so they were left with struggling to defeat everything else.  And the only way that they could achieve that was to destroy any evidence of that GOODNESS.

And I have been thinking about that today.  For it seems that the more that evil one tries to destroy, the stronger that Goodness Prevails.

After all, the Resurrection followed the Crucifixion.  And without the Crucifixion, there could be no Resurrection.  And all of humanity was redeemed through that Resurrection.  And it occurs to me that evil is so disordered that where it seeks to destroy, it simply allows for stronger growth – through Grace…

It is like pruning a tree.  It may look as though the good branches are being removed, and for a time the tree looks smaller and maybe even weaker and less beautiful.  After all, a tree with full and lush foliage is much prettier to look at than a tree that is bare branches.  And yet, without that pruning, the tree cannot grow and the fruit will not flourish.  And so, though the tree might look smaller and weaker and more bare for a period of time after it is pruned, later it blossoms more fruitfully and more beautifully in spite of that pruning.

And when I think about the events in my own life today, I consider the merits of trusting in God – even when things seem overcome by evil.  After all, that is exactly what Christ did on the day He died.  And the result of that was the Resurrection…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.