As if buried in the midst of Mary’s body, dead to appearances, his first resurrection was from the womb of the Holy Lady. It was she that, as a vehicle of Sprit, delivered him from the chamber of her being, bringing him to birth and to the threshold of earth’s theater.

Every birth of a Master must be in some sense a resurrection after a crucifixion, from a Good Friday to an Easter. Submitting himself to nature’s climate in another earthly incarnation was surely to him a kind of death, a reflection of the emanation from God which ushered in the Day of Manifestation. Entering humanity, his cross prefigured in her womb, his descent into matter was nothing less than crucifixion as he passed from the etheric realms into the coarseness of the earth’s vibratory matrix. As he took upon himself new bodies each more dense than the other, his Eternal Spirit further covered itself in elements of earth until his baby identity cuddled in the closure of Mary’s womb. Mary loosed him from his self-imposed restraint, his birth a resurrection into a new world--the world of earth. He now was one of us.

In our catholic tradition Our Lady has ever been present in the processes of birth, life, death, and resurrection. In the preternatural realm she was present with the Father "before heaven and earth existed" in the feminine aspect of the Divine One. Prefigured in the hidden life of God, Our Lady has always been associated with the third Person of the Holy Trinity, God’s Wisdom.

From her mystical womb, manifestation came forth; the life of God proliferated in new modalities of life and light, the life and light which occupies every human consciousness though covered over with earth-stuff. However obscured, our faith affirms the presence within and among us of that light of Christ. And always has Our Lady been present in the mix of matter and spirit which make our world.

With Jesus Our Lady lived the life. She was the shadow of his presence. She shared his path, went his way, felt his pain, suffered his torment. At the foot of the cross, she shared his death, and with the Apostle John, presented him in Resurrection to the Father, the first great Offertory.

No graven enclosure, no cross or death, could enfold or imprison the one who had become the Christ. Encompassed in a cloud of prayer and love--Mary’s prayer and love--the cross became a bow which launched his spirit into the heavens as an arrow across the horizon of its path. Christ is risen. He is born again, born into the house of his Father.

From the womb of Mary to the womb of rock, he was born anew into yet another realm, the realm of Spirit from which he had come; his return to the heavenly precincts was a resurrection of body, a body of spirit, newness, and ever-recurring life, eternal and immortal in the heavens. What had appeared to be a Way of the Cross was a Way of Life, a Way to Resurrection, a new birth into a consciousness of Being. He had traversed the plane of earthly experience, the hills and valleys of earth life. He had crossed the barriers and obstacles strewn along the passageways of time. Through the conduit of consciousness, he had experienced resurrection. He had entered the One.

The Resurrection of Christ showed forth the deathlessness of death in the most dramatic way possible. He demonstrated once and for all the primacy of Spirit.

It is a lesson of resurrection that the meaning of life is not to be found in a never- ending cycle of earth lives; neither is that meaning to be found within an endless maze of obstacles and enclosures without exit. The resurrection is an assurance that the Christ life within each of us will find its exit from the wheel of rebirth. The resurrection assures us that Christ is the Lord of karma, the Lord of death, and the Lord of life! For us too, there will be a day of resurrection!

In the prayer of the Liturgy we renew our Act of Faith: "that all his sons shall one day reach his feet, however far they stray."

Christ is within us, entombed in our own consciousness. At times we think him dead. But there are times when we feel him stir. There are times when we feel within us the quickening that promises rebirth and resurrection. There are times when we know he will come forth.

The old man is dying; the new man is coming to birth. Already within the sensitivity of our souls, we too feel the presence of Our Lady, our Mother, again a mother of life, again a Mother of Resurrection. Her energies, now as World Mother, bend to touch the Christ within each of us. The Christ rises again in us. He lives in us. This is the meaning of resurrection.

It is in the resurrection that all men, all women, and all creatures find their end, their purpose and their destiny. We are assured by Holy Scripture, by Tradition, and by intuitive insight--by all of Revelation, that our end is no end at all, but rather a beginning. With the Apostle Paul we proclaim the Indwelling Christ as our hope of glory, as we travail in birth again that Christ be formed in us! Involution, Evolution, and Rebirth, these Divine processes, these channels of the life of Christ support us and lead us to resurrection and peace. Mary has given us the Christ of the resurrection. And Christ is within us! We follow him to that same resurrection and peace and dare to say with Paul: "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me..." (Galatians 2:20) ,

...there is a peace that passeth understanding; it abides in the hearts of those who live in the eternal; there is a power which maketh all things new; it lives and moves in those who know the self as one. May that peace brood over you, that power uplift you, till you stand where the One Initiator is invoked, till you see his star shine forth.