Saturday in the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time, July 22, 2023

The Feast of St. Mary Magdalene

John 20, 1-2; 11-18

On the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb,

and we don't know where they put him.”  Mary stayed outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb and saw two angels in white sitting there, one at the head and one at the feet where the Body of Jesus had been. And they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, “They have taken my Lord, and I don't know where they laid him.”  When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there, but did not know it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?  Whom are you looking for?”  She thought it was the gardener and said to him, “Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him, and I will take him.”  Jesus said to her, “Mary!”  She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni,” which means Teacher. Jesus said to her, “Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.  But go to my brothers and tell them, I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”  Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and then reported what he told her.

Most of what we know for certain about St. Mary Magdalene comes from this account by John of the Lord’s Resurrection, his earlier note that this woman stood at the Cross of the Lord as he hung dying, and St. Mark’s mention that the Lord had cast “seven demons” from her (cf. Mark 16, 9).  Luke 8, 2 informs us that she followed the Lord with a number of other women who “ministered unto him of their substance.”  From the placement of Luke’s list of women and his concern with chronology it would seem that she followed him for one or two years.  Her going to the Cross also tells us of a longer attachment to Jesus than of having heard him for a short time.  The Gospels do not tell us of how she met him or the story of his exorcism of the demons who possessed her.  Mark’s casual identification of her suggests that her story was widely known among the first Christians.

We do not know much, then, about her past before she met Jesus but we know that after the exorcism, she felt that she belonged entirely to him.  She follows him throughout Judea and Galilee, sleeping where she could, eating what was available, living apart from her family in order to be in the company of her Lord.  And so we find her at the Cross, and then following Joseph and Arimathea and Nicodemus as they carry him to the tomb.  As a Jew she would have rested on the Sabbath, and as a devoted servant of Christ she gets up very early on Sunday morning, purchases the ointments for the proper anointing of the Lord’s Body, and carries these to the tomb.  She had heard the Lord Jesus speak of his rising again, but she did not know what that meant.  She did know that his Body needed the care of the Jewish burial rituals, and so she took it upon herself to give it to him.

“They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don't know where they put him.”  This line tells us of her heartbreak.  Not only have the authorities killed the One she loved, but now they (as she thought) have hidden his Body.  She had consoled herself a little that she would at least behold him this one last time at even this was denied her.  Above all, she feared that the leaders of the Jews would desecrate his Body in their hatred for him.

“Mary stayed outside the tomb weeping.”  The Gospel Reading skips over how Peter and John raced to the tomb to see for themselves.  Mary would have followed them back but would have arrived after they departed from it.  Finding the tomb as before with its weighty stone rolled back, she stood before it and wept grievously.  “And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb and saw two angels in white sitting there, one at the head and one at the feet where the Body of Jesus had been.”  The tomb was set in a little compound.  More a mausoleum for a family than a burial place for a single person, a body would have initially been laid on a stone bench inside, and then later moved to a slot carved out of the stone wall.  After the flesh had decayed the bones would have been placed in an ossuary.  Mary Magdalene bends over enough to see this bench.  The presence of the angels, appearing as young men dressed entirely in white, shocked her but did not scare her away.  This was a woman who had seen and suffered terrible things and she did not not frighten easily.  “They have taken my Lord, and I don't know where they laid him.”  Her desire to be with her Lord had resulted in her leaving her family and going wherever he went.  She yearned to be with him even in his Death and burial: “Who then shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation? Or distress? Or famine? Or nakedness? Or danger? Or persecution? Or the sword?” (Romans 8, 35).  

Seeing a figure whom she took to be a gardener, or the caretaker of these grounds, she pleaded: “Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him, and I will take him.”  Now, such an employee would not, by himself, have been able to remove the stone from the tomb or have any need to carry off the body of one interred within.  Her plea shows her utter desperation to be with the Lord in whatever way she could, and the profundity of her grief.

“Mary!”  The Gospels do not tell us that they had talked before.  In other cases of exorcism, the Lord addresses the demons but not the possessed person even after the exorcism.  The Lord does not even ask those who bring a possessed person to him for the person’s name.  Mary had followed him for some time, but did she seek anonymity in the company of the other women?  Or did she dare to speak to him in public so that he might know her name that way?  But here the Lord speaks directly to her, using her name, and she knows immediately that it is him.  “Rabbouni.”  We ought to think of her speaking this in a low voice as she should in the wonder of her recognition.  St. John preserves the exact Aramaic word that she used to address him as though vividly reliving the experience of hearing her tell her story to him.

“Stop holding on to me.”  While we may interpret this as the Lord responding to her devotion in an unfeeling way, she probably had embraced him or at least his feet (cf. Matthew 28, 9) and held on for some time, as though never intending to let go.  The Lord basked in her love and allowed her to express it in this way until it was necessary to send her to the Apostles, who still were wondering what had happened.

“I have seen the Lord.”  She would have hurried into Jerusalem with the news and spoken breathlessly to the amazed Apostles.  They would have held on to her every word.  Perhaps they had little noticed her before in their travels and missions, but she ranked ahead of them now as “the apostles to the Apostles”, as St. Thomas Aquinas called her.

We pray through her intercession that we may love the Lord Jesus as passionately as she and one day come to stand with her before his throne in heaven, adoring him for all eternity.