This Lenten season, I thought a lot about the trials, struggles, and pain of Christ. I tried to devote myself each day to reflect on His suffering and unite my heart with His more fully. As I drew nearer to Christ each day during Lent, I found myself in a much more peaceful place than before Lent began. After the 40 days of Lent were over, I found myself in Holy Week, still feeling the peace of Christ, but also feeling a lot of uncertainty and pain.

Holy Week is certainly one of the most emotional weeks of the Church year. We are reminded of Christ’s agony, His death, and finally, His resurrection. During this one week, Christ was betrayed, his disciples felt hopeless, His mother Mary was in deep pain, and then He returned gloriously. The emotional roller coaster of Holy Week contains countless lessons in itself.

One part of Holy Week that tends to not be given as much attention as it could is the empty tomb found on Easter morning. When Mary Magdalene found that Christ’s tomb was empty, I imagine the emotions she felt ranged from anger, to disbelief, to despair. She probably felt that all hope was gone and that Christ had left forever.

However, her joy is renewed when she comes to find that the tomb is empty because Jesus had risen from the dead. Instead of forever being a source of pain and despair, the empty tomb had turned out to be the beginning of something new and beautiful.

The empty tomb was a source of hope.

I think we all find “empty tombs” in our lives at different times. Opportunities turn out to be fruitless, relationships fall apart, friends move away, we get rejected from jobs, or we just feel empty and lost in ourselves. These circumstances can make us feel as though something we once had that we placed so much hope and belief in is suddenly taken away from us, leaving us with an empty tomb where despair lies. Our “empty tombs”, our broken promises and lost dreams, are much like the empty tomb on Easter.

If we allow it, our empty tombs can be entirely new beginnings. Sometimes, the only way to find out what we truly need is to lose everything we once thought we wanted. When we find ourselves with an empty tomb, we can find hope in the promise of a new beginning coming our way.

The disciples wanted Jesus to remain on Earth with them. They thought that was how Jesus’s message would spread and reach all the ends of the Earth. However, His death, and, more specifically, the empty tomb, was essential. It meant that Christ had risen and His new mission had begun. The disciples probably never saw this coming, but it turned out to be the most important event in the history of the Church. Christ’s Light of hope shone brighter than ever before in the midst of the empty tomb.

Our empty tombs, where we find no hope and can make no sense of our circumstances, can actually provide for us new beginnings, new hopes, and fulfilled promises. All we have to do is keep following the Light.