An Easter visualization

To accompany the song "Christ Is Risen" by J. Donald Walters

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Just last night I had the privilege of again singing in J. Donald Walters' Oratorio, Christ Lives! I've enjoyed the blessings of this music for nearly 30 years now, with my first performance back in December 1996. I also joined a choir in 2000 that performed this extraordinary work—fifty pieces in all—in six different cities in Italy and again had the opportunity in 2005 on tour of five cities on the West coast of the United States. Since moving to Ananda Village outside of Nevada City, California in 2011, I've enjoyed singing it once—sometimes twice—a year, with occasional appearances as a soloist.

The inspiration for the Oratorio was Walters' pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1983. One of the most powerful pieces of Christ Lives! is the piece written for Jesus's resurrection, "Christ is Risen," which was inspired by his visit to the Holy Sepulcher. "Here, more than anywhere else in the Holy Land," Walters wrote, "I felt Christ triumphant. This, for me, was the most intense experience of my pilgrimage."

In a talk in October 1999 in Assisi, Italy, Walters shared the story in more detail:

I remember when I had been sitting outside the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. I was with Rosanna [his wife] and there were crowds of tourists. We were going in and I thought, "It's no fun going in there with these crowds." So we sat outside and were meditating, and at a certain point she opened her eyes and saw that there were no tourists—they'd all gone off to lunch or something. So we immediately went in and meditated. And I felt such exaltation! It was just wonderful. I meditated first, and then I wanted to take photos. Just about then the crowds began coming back and I was holding my shoulder against the first person so I could still finish taking the pictures I wanted. And then I let them in.

I didn't think I could ever capture in music the inspiration I felt meditating there. But when I wrote that "Christ is Risen," I was so thrilled to find that, "Yes, this really says what I felt." So much of the Christ Lives! Oratorio is what I really felt in all those places, but it was in the Holy Sepulcher, particularly, that I felt "I'll never get this," but God gave it to me. And I have to say that, in fact, God has given me all of this music. I prayed to him and asked him to show me what to do, and I've understood it came to me.

I feel the exaltation that Walters captured in "Christ Is Risen" every time I sing it and especially love the burst of triumphant joy expressed the organ prelude. For many years I've visualized Mary Magdelene coming to the tomb early on Easter morning, where Jesus appears to her. The moment of recognition is where I think the organ prelude naturally begins.

As an Easter offering, then, I present that visualization below in which the audio track is embedded at the appropriate time. I purposefully haven’t added any other images so that you can create the scenery for yourself. I also wrote it in present tense to help you be more, well, present in the visualization, and to match the tense of “Christ Lives!”

At the end of this post, too, is a 2024 video of a full performance of this oratorio.

Enjoy.

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Mary is glad to be awake, if there can be any gladness now. Her dreams—a tangled confusion of terrible images and equally terrible emotions—left her heart racing…and aching. The crosses. Jesus hanging, bleeding, calling upon Abba and Elijah and yet speaking words of consolation. The callous soldiers drinking and gambling while Jesus suffered and died. And the raging storm.

How had it come to this? How could the people, the people who witnessed his goodness and grace and love, the very people he came to serve and bless, have shouted for his death? Perhaps the storm had unleashed its wrath in retribution.

She tries to shake off the horror of the last few days, but the persistent pain in her bosom haunts her with the indignity of the spear-thrust into Jesus' side to make sure he was indeed dead.

She is glad to be awake. She isn't sure she is glad to be alive, to awaken from one nightmare into another. A great wave of joy had broken over Galilee, over all Judea, only to be crushed with ruthless spite and broken by jealousy—sheer jealousy of rich and prideful men. What hope is there? What is the point of living? The nightmares would continue—within and without. The Pharisees and Romans wouldn't stop with Jesus. They'd come after all of them. If Rome liked anything it was making an example of traitors and insurrectionists, even if they weren't. Why is Rome so threatened by love? By a man who cured blindness and leprosy and lameness and….

Mary shakes her head. Maybe she hadn't woken at all. Either way, it would be only nightmares, a life of endless illusions.

Mary quietly dons her robe and sandals and pads out of her chamber. It is not yet dawn. No need to disturb the others. Maybe their dreams are gentler. Maybe they dream of happier times with the Master. How Mary wishes to see him again and hear his voice, that voice that so comforted the torment of her soul.

But it would never be again. His wrecked body lay rotting in Joseph's tomb. Oh, the embalming would stay that process for a time, but decay was inevitable. She'd forced herself to watch the burial. No…it wasn't through her will that she'd stayed. It was because she'd lost the will to live…she wishes now that she'd thrown herself into the sepulcher as the men rolled the stone in place, to seal herself in. At least then, in the triumph of the grave, she wouldn't be alone. It had been hours before she had even the strength to stand and shamble back to her lodgings.

Mary enters the common room where Simon Peter and John are already seated at the table. She suspects their nights were no more restful than hers. Naught but silence passes between the three of them. Simon picks listlessly at a piece of bread; John takes occasional and equally heartless sips from a cup.

Mary turns away. If she looks at their broken countenances, she will surely break down herself. She has no appetite anyway. Better perhaps to just starve. Yes, why not? She could still join the Master in death, the only lasting reality. She would refuse sustenance, refuse water, even, drink nothing but vinegar as they'd fed Jesus when he thirsted. The end would not be long in coming. She could waste away here, in hiding, or….

A sudden resolve forms within her heart, and she makes for the door.

"Mary?" Simon calls to her.

She meets his gaze but says nothing. Her face tightens and twists, a tear forming in her eye.

Don't stop me she wants to say, but she doesn’t need to. Simon merely nods through his own despair.

Mary creeps down the creaky old balustrade, hoping the noise won't wake any of the others. She shuffles along the cobbled road, deserted in the nascent foreglow of the dawn save for a stray cat and few snoring beggars. They can sleep. Today for them will be as it was yesterday, as it will be tomorrow. Their world remains the same. Theirs had not been shattered. Jesus or no Jesus, they will stretch out their hands as always, as they'd done even when the Master had passed by, ready to give oh so much more had they but begged for truth rather than alms.

She passes now through the Gennath gate and leaves the road on the path to Tomb Garden. Garden, huh. It will never be the same again—only the resting place of their beloved teacher, if they'll be allowed to visit at all. Even now, she risks—expects—persecution. The guards posted at the tomb will likely run her off. Or maybe they'll let her sit and starve as she intends. Save them the trouble of hunting her down. Maybe if she is obstinate enough they'll do her a favor and run her through. Then she can be with Jesus even sooner.

The desolate hill of Golgotha broods a menace against the dim glow in the eastern sky, the posts on which her Master so recently hung and died stand in mute defiance of death against the stars.

She cannot bear to relive that day, nor the Master's last moments, nor the grave ceremony of taking his dead form down, wrapping it, and hauling it to Joseph's tomb in the garden. She lowers her gaze to stare only at the path where her plodding feet carry her forward, incessantly, unwittingly. She cannot bear to be at any distance now. She will sit at the tomb until death takes her.

The path splits into narrower, lesser-worn trails. She chooses the second to the left, descending into to the shallow where Jesus lay. Another twenty paces and she'll be there. The guards have not shouted yet. They will soon enough.

Ten paces now and she can collapse and let her heart tear asunder and rend her life from its frame. Her eyes moisten.

No one stops her. No shouts order her to hold fast, no barking command to desist and return whence she came. Only the chirrup of the locusts, faint birdsong in the dawn.

Mary cannot bear to look upon the tomb, but she cannot any more bear the mystery. She lifts her gaze.

Oh!

There are no sentries, present neither in wakefulness nor sleep, nor in death. And the heavy sealing stone, the one that took five men to move it into place—it has fallen on its side.

She looks around—left, right, behind. Surely this is a ruse to ensnare Jesus' disciples? But she is alone. What now? If he is not here, then what becomes of her self-sacrifice? Where have they taken him? Do they fear him even in death?

Mary turns and races back as fleet as her limbs allow.

She bursts through the door, panting, fighting for breath. Her sides ache, now as much as her heart, her tears dried to salt on her face by the rush of air as she ran.

Simon and John leap from their seats at her abrupt appearance, as if soldiers had barged in to arrest them. But they see Mary and relax, even as they come to support her.

"Mary! What is it?" Simon asks.

"I….I…." Mary gasps for a few breath, coughs, then straightens.

"I went to the tomb." She gulps more air. "I went there and…oh Simon! The sentries were gone and…." She gasps again. "And the stone is pulled away. They…." Gasp. "They have taken the Master away, to where I don't know!"

Simon starts, looks at Mary, then John, then bolts through the door.

"Simon, wait!" John calls, but Simon has already gained the street. John speeds after him.

Mary grasps the lintel. She cannot run after them, but after recovering her breath, she follows at a brisk pace.

As the sky's colors brighten, Mary crests the hill in the garden to see Simon and John emerging from the tomb, gesturing as they converse. It is true, then—Jesus is stolen away.

A surge rises from her heart—even in her wish to die she will be denied. What more pains must she endure? She descends again to the tomb. Simon and John speak of the burial clothes laying in the sepulcher, the body nowhere to be found.

"Why would they do this?" asks John.

"The Pharisees want to insult us further," Simon replies, "draw us out so they can capture and torture us as well. Come, John, let us tell the others. We must plan." He turns and starts up the trail.

"Mary?" John asks. "Do come. There's nothing for us here now."

Mary says nothing. She only stares and weeps.

"Well, come when you can," says John, as he departs.

Mary let her head hang. Only emptiness now. There is nothing—nothing—neither life nor death, only an existence devoid of all meaning, all feeling.

Her legs falter. She collapses to her knees, then to her hands. Take me, Lord, she whispers, take my soul into your waiting arms.

Drawn by a strange pull, she claws her way to the tomb's entrance. Maybe she'll still lay there and give herself to starvation anyway. Maybe someone will favor her and put the stone back in place. Take me, dear Lord, take me.

As she reaches the portal, she swoons almost to a faint. There, my prayer is answered. I shall die….

She looks inside the chamber where she will lay and sleep. Ah, they have come for me already. Two figures in radiant white garments await her, sitting to either side of Jesus' abandoned shroud. She suffers herself to smile at them through her tears.

"Woman," one says, "why weepest thou?"

Must they need an explanation?

"They have taken away my Master, can't you see?" she whispers. "And I know not where. So, I have come here myself to quit the body."

The foolishness of her words—or, is it the sudden change of countenance of the beings, or their sudden disappearance? Mary draws a quick breath and shuffles backwards away from the tomb. What was she thinking? She must return to Simon and John and help locate the body of their Lord.

She turns and pushes to her knees again, preparing to stand. But she halts. Another figure stands before her, a few paces away, his face hidden within a cowl.

"Woman, why weepest thou?" he says in a gentle voice. "Whom dost thou seek?"

"Oh, sir. Perhaps you've been here while tending the garden—did you see anyone take the body from this tomb? Or, if you have moved him, to where? I beseech thee, tell me. I would give him a better resting place."

The man begins to lift his arms. In the graceful tenderness of their movement, Mary is transfixed. Who does it remind her of?

He reaches up and pulls back his hood.

"Mary."

[Skip forward to the music track now if you prefer.]

Mary's eyes widen. Her heart leaps into her throat. Sobs force the air from her lungs through her gaping mouth. She coughs, chokes, laughs. Tears stream from her eyes as she shakes, and a wave of exaltation surges through her form. How is this possible? It is truly he, Jesus? Alive and standing, walking, talking? With but one word…throughout every muscle, every nerve, every feeling his voice has brushed away all fear and hurt—

"Rabboni!" she cries. Her whole body tightens, ready to bound forth and bow at his feet, to hold those feet that she once washed and kissed, to bathe them again with the waters of her cries, and to never again let go.

But Jesus holds up a hand, holding Mary fast. "Touch me not," he says, "for I am not yet ascended to my Father."

His form shimmers in the sunrise. Is he becoming as the sunbeams?

"Go," Jesus says to her with a smile. "Go to my brethren and say unto them, 'I ascend into the Father, and your Father; and to my God and your God." And he vanishes into the rays of the dawn.

For a moment that could be an hour, a day, a year, a lifetime, her whole being pulses with an aliveness she has never know. She knows not whether to laugh or cry, or both, but one thing is certain: it is not life that is an illusion, but death.

[Begin organ prelude: here is the audio track for the whole song, from the 1986 first release of Christ Lives!¹]

Mary leaps up and her feet become as wings, flying her over the trails and paths. She is not sure if she's touching the ground at all, so light is her bearing. Up the hill, she sees Golgotha before her, but it is now smaller, now defeated. Along the stony path to the Gennath Gate, flying, flying past the first of Jerusalem's populace to begin the day. They hardly give her notice, for she is like the wind, breezing past as an invisible vapor.

Through the streets she hastens, freely to the stairs and to the door. And without hesitation, she bursts in, heedless of the bar on the door, which has lifted at her approach.

[Choir begins singing with the lyrics as follows. Note that although Walters did not indicate the lines as such, I like to visualize them being alternately sung by Mary and the disciples, the joining together as noted.]

[Mary, announcing] Christ is ris'n this Easter morn:
[Disciples, responding] Thus our lives to joy are born!
[Mary] He from death is ever free:
[Disciples] In His life e'en so are we!

[All] Gone all our darkness, vanished forever!
In our souls Thy light we see.
Gone our delusions, clear now our vision:
In Thy joy we live ever free!

As the song repeats, I like to visualize Mary and the disciples now going out to make the same announcement, to which the world responds.

Christ is Risen. May you have a blessed Easter.

Here is the video of the 2024 performance in which I sang bass (in the video thumbnail below, I’m in the third row, second from the left). Normally I sing tenor, but I know both parts and the basses were somewhat outnumbered, hence the switch-hitting.

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1. I’ll add that in the original Christ Lives! version, the song was preceded by narration and didn’t begin until after Jesus appeared to all the disciples. Truly, any moment works.