Matthew Devotion 27:60

"... he laid the body in his new tomb which he had hewn out of the rock..."

As the rich man from Arimathea - who hewed a new tomb from rock, took care to wrap the incoming Christ, and rolled the stone over its entrance; as the poor Virgin Mary - who prepared for the Incarnation in her Womb through purifying her heart, received the greeting of the Angel, and took conceived Christ in her own, Virgin Tomb - so that same Christ is laid to rest in our hearts when they have been prepared through personal devotion, hewn out of our hearts of stone, and made clean.

Many of us would invite the Deadened God into tombs that reflect the ghoulish backdrop of this narrative. Our wet floors slippery with the fungus from the drippings from our sinful stalactites, the corners of our caverns all but hidden by webs of deception, the stagnate air musky with the stench of yellow mold.

But we are to prepare a Way for the coming of the Lord, are we not? Have we not been called to make a place prepared for the Lord? Sure! We have a Divine Directive to raise the valleys and lower the mountains and welcome the Son of God into a heart that has been, to the best of our ability, paved with Holiness, curbed with the Fruit of Repentance.

As Mary (sitting opposite the tomb) watched the rich man carefully wrap her boy in clean linens, she too could remember when she had done the same. As the rich man laid the Lifeless God onto the stone shelf, she could remember the times when she too had tucked him into the manger, closing the door behind. From her Womb to his Tomb. From the Wood of the Manger to the Wood of the Cross. All had been full-circled around to this eerie place. It was a heart-ripping, saddening completion - to be sure, eerie - but, all the same, the completion of a Divine Visitation that would never, nor could ever, be fully understood.

Neither Mary nor the rich man knew the end of the Story. The were content to prepare their tombs and humbly be ready for the incoming Christ. They had no real idea of his resurrection, and how it would radically change their lives forever. For now,  their obedience was good enough.

May we have that same faith - the Faith of a Child - that we, being cleansed and made new by the indwelling Christ, would prepare the Caverns of our Souls to equally welcome the Crucified Christ.