It was early morning of the first day of the week. According to the Jewish calendar (when the Christian one did not exist as yet), it was Sunday early morning. It was the first day of the Jewish week, after the Sabbath, the day of rest. We know how it feels after the week-end, on Monday morning! It was supposed to be a normal new day of a normal new week: fathers leaving for the fields or for their cattle, mothers preparing their children for school. On the first day of the week there is not so much of enthusiasm, everybody is still tiered and sleepy. The political and religious leaders could have taken an extended week-end. Finally, they had managed to get rid of a self-made and popular Prophet and resolve three years of increasing tension. Even for some of His disciples, early morning of the first day of the week, decided to call it a day and get on the road leading back home to their past occupations.

Our generation seems to be living in a permanent early Monday morning! We are afraid to wake up and face the routine of a new day, a new week. Strange as it may sound, we are even afraid to sleep, knowing that then we will have to wake up. We have turned our week-ends, which are supposed to be days of rest, into the most hectic time of the week. We are obsessed to keep ourselves busy: we either work even during the week-end, or drown ourselves in entertainment spending money in alcohol and drugs to keep us going.

Something happened early morning, on the first day of the week. Something IS happening as a new day, week, month, year, century, millennium dawns. When it happened two thousand years ago, only three simple women got in touch with it, then a few others, amongst them those two disappointed disciples. Who cares amongst our generation that what happened then is present to us today? Are we not afraid to wake up and go beyond the long week-end of Easter, the lamb, the chocolate and the figolli, lest something touches our lives and turns it upside down? But somebody, somewhere, is awake….