"Did you feel that?" she said. "Did the earth tremble?"

Each woman was carrying cloths and a jar in her arms, myrrh in one, frankincense, nard. They meant to anoint the corpse of the Lord with their spices, their final honor to him whom they loved. It was only the third day since he had been buried.

"It seemed that the ground moved under my feet," Mary Magdalene said.

"It did move," said Joanna.

Mary Salome said, "But there was no sound."

Neither was there light yet, though the stars were dimming in a charcoal sky. Dawn was behind them.

"Let’s go."

"Hurry. Please hurry."

They skirted Jerusalem on its northern side, then turned south to the garden in which Joseph’s tomb had been newly hewn in rock. Mary Magdalene was peering forward and muttering, "But who will roll the stone?"

She couldn’t make out which sepulcher was Joseph’s. The wall of the city was on their left, blocking any eastern light. All the tombs were in shadow.

Suddenly Joanna shrieked and dropped her jar. Mary Salome dropped hers, too. It shattered. A pillar of white light, bright as a blade, had shot down from heaven and stood on the stone of Joseph’s tomb. That stone was lying flat on the ground.

Mary Magdalene gasped. The dawn air smelled of myrrh. A voice said: "Don’t be afraid." It seemed to Mary that the light contained the figure of a man, glorious in every aspect and so bright that brightness itself was his clothing.

The man said, "You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is not here. Behold the place where they laid him. Then run to tell his disciples that he goes before you into Galilee. There you shall see him as he said to you."

The light withdrew into heaven, leaving the women blinded and terrified. That voice had been no consolation. Mary Salome gathered her robe up and started to run back the way that they had come. Mary Magdalene, void of all expression, began moving toward the tomb itself.

"Mary, don’t!" Joanna rushed forward and pulled at her sleeve, but then she shrank back from the open tomb, wailing, "Mary, please! It was an earthquake! It was the Romans or the wrath of God. Whatever happened, it’s all over now. Mary, please, let’s go!"

Mary Magdalene did not respond. The small, solemn, pale woman now knelt down directly in front of the black hole in stone. This was more than Joanna could bear. "We can’t tell anyone," she cried, and she dashed after Mary Salome.

Mary Magdalene bent forward and stretched her hand into the shadow of the sepulcher. Cold air. A dead air, but no odor. On the right side in darkness she touched a flank of hewn stone. With her fingers’ tips she measured upward one cubit and came to its surface: this was the ledge upon which they had laid the body of the Lord. She reached deeper in darkness, preparing to touch his rigid corpse—but she found nothing. Felt nothing. There was nothing there.

Mary’s stomach twisted. He was gone! He was gone, as the blinding white figure had said! Mary jumped up.

Daybreak: there were flecks of golden fire over Jerusalem, south between the stone wall and the hill of crosses. She ran through the Garden Gate into the city and up the road that had led to Zion. She ran to the house of the Essene and beat on his door. She beat and beat till someone came and opened it. Then she rushed through the vestibule, out the back to a second building built higher than the first, up its stairs to another door, which was locked: "Simon!" she cried. "Simon! Simon, open the door!"

Not since Jesus had driven the demons out of her had Mary moved with such strength and ferocity. If Simon didn’t open the door soon, she had a mind to crack it like a cask with her forehead. Behold, Mary! Mary Magdalene is crazy again!

But Simon did open the door. And Mary immediately was chattering: "They took the Lord out of the tomb, out of the tomb, Simon, Joseph’s tomb the tomb itself; and we don’t know where they put him..."

Simon grabbed her and demanded, "Are you sure?"

Mary said, "It was dark, but I put my hand in..."

But Simon Peter was already racing down the steps and out into the street. John cried, "Simon, I’m coming, too." He flew past Mary. He ran so fast that he outdistanced Simon.

Mary followed both men. She caught up to Simon at the Garden Gate, and when they both came to the tomb they found John kneeling at the entrance peering into it. Simon pushed John aside and went in.

The morning light had strengthened. Mary could see what Simon Peter was looking at inside: the shroud—still in its windings on the ledge, but flat. And there was the cloth that had covered Jesus’ head, rolled up in a place by itself.

Now John, too, crawled into the tomb. The two men crowded the small space, so Mary pulled back and stood aside, shifting her weight from foot to foot. When the men came out they were shaking their heads and saying nothing.

"Simon?" Mary begged. "John?"

But they began to walk away, each consumed by his own thought. Mary ran ahead and stood directly in front of Simon Peter. "What are you going to do about it?" she said. "How will we find his body?"

Simon put his big face close to hers. She saw his jowls trembling. "Leave it alone!" he said. "Don’t you think we’re in enough danger already?" Then he walked away. John followed.

Mary watched until they disappeared into the city and then, finally, she began to cry. No, Mary Magdalene was not strong again. She was weak and helpless and sad and desolate. And now that the tears had begun, she could not control herself at all. She went to the place where Mary Salome had broken her jar of myrrh. She knelt down and gathered the pieces and tried to fit them together again. But she couldn’t. She could hardly see. Weeping filled her vision with such a rain of sorrow, that all the world was blurred.

She dropped the clay shards and howled like a small child lost. Yes, Mary is crazy again, and she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care.

"Woman?"

Someone was calling to her.

"Woman?" It was a clear voice, breaking through the morning and the roaring in her head.

"Woman," it said, "why are you weeping?"

Huffing with her sobs, Mary looked up and thought she saw the gardener coming. "Because they took my Lord away," she sobbed, "and I don’t know where they put him."

The man said, "Who are you looking for?"

"Oh, sir!" Mary said, rising up, "if you are the one who carried him off, tell me where he is and I’ll get him myself."

Now the man stopped directly in front of her—long, dark hair, through her swim of tears. A white tunic. Clean-shaven.

In a soft, familiar voice, the man said, "Oh, Mary."

She gasped. She looked and saw the beautiful forehead, the raven black hair of her dear Lord Jesus and his steadfast, golden gaze!

"Rabboni!" she cried.

"Hush, hush, child, hush." Jesus placed a finger to his lips. "You cannot cling to me now," he said. "I haven’t yet ascended to my Father. But go to my friends and tell them that I am ascending to my father and your Father, to my God and your God."

Oh, yes, Mary Magdelene was very strong indeed, and swifter than the north wind blowing toward Jerusalem. She was fair and she was lovely now, her lips like a scarlet thread, her cheeks like halves of a pomegranate were beautiful.

The morning was still young when she arrived for the second time at the upper room and stood in the doorway laughing into the dark den of gloomy disciples. Mary couldn’t help herself. It was her great grim mouth that drove her to it. She threw out her arms and ran to Simon Peter crying: "Simon, dance with me! Hug me and spin me around, because I have just seen the Lord. He is alive! Simon, Simon, he has risen from the dead!"

Even before the dawn one Friday morning I noticed a young man, handsome and strong, walking the alleys of our City. He was pulling an old cart filled with clothes both bright and new, and he was calling in a clear, tenor voice:

"Rags!" Ah, the air was foul and the first light filthy to be crossed by such sweet music.

"Rags! New rags for old! I take your tired rags! Rags!" he sang.

"Now, this is a wonder," I thought to myself, for the man stood six-feet-four, and his arms were like tree limbs, hard and muscular, and his eyes flashed intelligence. Could he find no better job than this, to be a ragman in the inner city?

I followed him. My curiosity drove me. And I wasn’t disappointed.

Soon the Ragman saw a woman sitting on her back porch. She was sobbing into a handkerchief, sighing, and shedding a thousand tears. Her knees and elbows made a sad X together. Her shoulders shook. Her heart was breaking.

The Ragman stopped his cart. Quietly, he walked to the woman, stepping round tin cans, dead toys, and Pampers.

"Give me your rag," he said so gently, "and I’ll give you another."

He slipped the handkerchief from her eyes. She looked up, and he laid across her palm a linen cloth so clean and new that it shined. She blinked from the gift to the giver.

Then, as he began to pull his cart again, the Ragman did a strange thing: he put her stained handkerchief to his own face; and then he began to weep, to sob as grievously as she had done, his shoulders shaking. Yet she was left without a tear.

"This is a wonder," I breathed to myself, and I followed the sobbing Ragman like a child who cannot turn away from a mystery.

"Rags! Rags! New rags for old!" he sang.

In a little while, when the sky showed grey behind the rooftops and I could see the shredded curtains hanging out black windows, the Ragman came upon a girl child whose head was wrapped in a bandage, whose eyes were empty. Blood soaked her bandage. A single line of blood ran down her cheek.

Now the tall Ragman looked upon this child with pity, and he drew a lovely yellow bonnet from his cart.

"Give me your rag," he said, tracing his own line on her cheek, "and I’ll give you mine."

The child could only gaze at him while he loosened the bandage, removed it, and tied it to his own head. The bonnet he set on hers. And I gasped at what 1 saw: for with the bandage went the wound! Against his brow it ran a darker, more substantial blood—his own!

"Rags! Rags! 1 take old rags!" cried the sobbing, bleeding, strong, intelligent Ragman.

The sun hurt both the sky, now, and my eyes; the Ragman seemed more and more to hurry.

"Are you going to work?" he asked a man who leaned against a telephone pole. The man shook his head.

The Ragman pressed him: "Do you have a job?"

"Are you crazy?" sneered the other. He pulled away from the pole, revealing the right sleeve of his jacket, flat, the cuff stuffed into the pocket. He had no arm.

"So," said the Ragman. "Give me your jacket, and I’ll give you mine."

Such quiet authority in his voice!

The one-armed man took off his jacket. So did the Ragman and I trembled at what I saw: for the Ragman’s arm stayed in its sleeve, and when the other put it on he had two good arms, thick as tree limbs; but the Ragman had only one.

"Go to work," he said.

After that he found a drunk, lying unconscious beneath an army blanket, an old man, hunched, wizened, and sick. He took that blanket and wrapped it round himself, but for the drunk he left new clothes.

And now I had to run to keep up with the Ragman. Though he was weeping uncontrollably, and bleeding freely at the forehead, pulling his cart with one arm, stumbling for drunkenness, falling again and again, exhausted, old, old, and sick, yet he went with terrible speed. On spider’s legs he skittered through the alleys of the City, this mile and the next, until he came to its limits, and then he rushed beyond.

I wept to see the change in this man. I hurt to see his sorrow. And yet I needed to see where he was going in such haste, perhaps to know what drove him so.

The little old Ragman, he came to a landfill. He came to the garbage pits. And then I wanted to help him in what he did, but I hung back, hiding. He climbed a bill. With tormented labor he cleared a little space on that hill. Then he sighed. He lay down. He pillowed his head on a handkerchief and a jacket. He covered his bones with an army blanket. And he died.

Oh, how I cried to witness that death! I slumped into a junked car and wailed and mourned as one who has no hope because I had come to love the Ragman. Every other face had faded in the wonder of this man, and I cherished him; but he died. I sobbed myself to sleep.

I did not know—how could I know?—that I slept through Friday night and Saturday and its night, too.

But then, on Sunday morning, I was wakened by a violence.

Light—pure, hard, demanding light—slammed against my sour face, and I blinked, and I looked, and I saw the last and the first wonder of all. There was the Ragman, folding the blanket most carefully, a scar on his forehead, but alive! And, besides that, healthy! There was no sign of sorrow nor of age, and all the rags that he had gathered shined for cleanliness.

Well, then I lowered my head and, trembling for all that I had seen, I myself walked up to the Ragman. I told him my name with shame, for I was a sorry figure next to him. Then I took off all my clothes in that place, and I said to him with dear yearning in my voice: "Dress me."

He dressed me. My Lord, he put new rags on me, and I am a wonder beside him. The Ragman, the Ragman, the Christ!