The Feast of St, Mary Magdalene, Thursday, July 22, 2021

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.

Very little is said of St. Mary Magdalene in the Gospels.  They drop hints, as though expecting us to know what they meant, but they are rather circumspect regarding her.  Both St. Mark and St. Luke tell us that Jesus cast seven demons out of her, and we also know that she stood beneath the Cross with the Blessed Virgin and St. John.  The Gospels further tell us that she was one of the women who followed the Lord and provided for him out of their own means (cf. Luke 8, 3).  These facts speak of her passion for the Lord Jesus as her Savior.  Of all the people the Lord had healed, of all the people the Lord had called to follow him, she came to be with him as he hung on the Cross.  Who else was there?  His Mother, who loved him beyond all telling, and the disciple whom Jesus loved.  Shame and humiliation meant nothing to them as they looked up into the face of the one who was everything to them.  They hardly heard the scorn, the sneers, the mockery of the high priests and the others who gathered like vultures around the one dying on the Cross.

Mary Magdalene stayed at the Cross the entire time the Lord suffered there, and she saw him die.  She experienced the earthquake that marked his Death, and she saw the centurion shove his spear into the Lord’s side.  The horror of that afternoon did not drive her away in sickness and fear.  She only saw the Lord who had saved her.  She remained at Golgotha even as Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus took his Body down from the Cross, and she followed them to the tomb where they laid it.  She took note of the place so that she could find it again.  And then, a practical woman, she went to one of the shops in Jerusalem that was still open as the sun was going down and the Sabbath was beginning, and she bought “sweet spices” with which to anoint the Body of the Lord after the Sabbath had passed.  She did this in company with at least a couple of other women with whom she had followed the Lord.

St. John focuses on Mary Magdalene in his recounting of the first appearance of the Lord after his Resurrection, and he shows the fullness of her love in how early she came to the tomb, how her anxiety to care for his precious Body overrode waiting until later in the day to rally some of the men to move the heavy stone that covered the mouth of the tomb, and in how she remained at the tomb even after she had discovered that it was empty, as if to say, Where else can I go?  

“She turned around and saw Jesus there, but did not know it was Jesus.”  This has been interpreted as teaching that the glorified bodies of the saints will differ in appearance from how their bodies looked during their life on earth.  While that is no doubt true, there seems to be more to her not recognizing the Lord than this.  Was it that her tears marred her vision, or that the grim reality of his Death had so impressed itself on her mind that she simply could not recognize him as alive and conversing with her?  But it also seems that her question to him is phrased awkwardly, and is a little strange.  It is almost as if she is attempting to get him to speak some more so that she can listen to the sound of his voice.  “Mary!”  The Lord calling her name is one of the most moving moments in all of the Scriptures, and in all of human history.  She recognized the way he spoke her name.  It was the way only Jesus had spoken it, with his heavy Galilean accent and the sheer love of her in his voice.  She answered him at once, and John gives us the exact Aramaic name she called him, translating it into the Greek for his readers: “Teacher!” although there is more to what she called him than how we think of “teacher”, which we see today as merely a profession.  For her, the Lord taught how she should live, and who God was, and how much God loved her.  He taught her about the beauty of the world God had created, and that he had created it for her.  Before the Lord had cast out the evil spirits that had possessed her and used her, she had endured a miserable existence.  We can think of other examples of the possessed in the Gospel: of the man possessed by Legion, who took him over so that he “had his dwelling in the tombs, and no man now could bind him, not even with chains. For having been often bound with fetters and chains, he had burst the chains, and broken the fetters in pieces, and no one could tame him.  And he was always day and night in the tombs and in the mountains, crying and cutting himself with stones” (Mark 5, 3-5). Or of the little boy from whom the Lord cast out demons after his Transfiguration: “I have brought my son to you, who has a dumb spirit, who, whenever he seizes him, dashes him down, and he foams at the mouth and gnashes his teeth and grieves” (Mark 9, 16-17).  Jesus had saved her, and she never forgot it.  He had given her her life.  And now, after losing him to death, she had him again.

“Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.”  The Greek has, “Stop touching me.”  In her wonder and love, she had embraced him, and he had held her.  But only in heaven could she embrace him forever.  In the meantime, the Lord sends her on a mission to tell his Apostles of his rising from the dead.  To be given a commission by her Lord was her fervent dream, and so she carries it out energetically.  We do not know if she saw him again on earth after that, but her love for him only grew in intensity during the remainder of her life, and now she beholds him forever in heaven, an example of how we ought to yearn for the Lord, setting all else beside, and an intercessor  for us as well.