Today’s Gospel takes us back to the morning of the Resurrection of the Lord. As we reflect on Saint John’s account of Mary Magdalene discovering the empty tomb, we can feel her desperation as she frantically searched for Jesus.
The two angels in white 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." Even 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." Her reaction tugs on our hearts because it is one of a lover losing her beloved, as we heard in today’s first reading: “Have you seen him whom my heart loves?”
How maddening it must be for us when we think we have lost a loved one, which is why we keep them close to us, especially children in places with large crowds. Oh, how our hearts ache with the passing of our loved ones. How hopeless it must be for us when we have fallen deep into sin and temptation. Jesus does not want this for us. Christ does not want us to be sad and lose hope, to be imprisoned in our own darkness. So he calls out to us by name, like he did to Mary Magdalene, saying: "Mary! Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.” In other words, Jesus tells us to stop clinging onto the things of this world but look to him who is the light of the world.
And when Jesus has pulled us out from darkness into his marvelous light, he calls us to spread that light in the world, just as he told Mary Magdalene, saying: “. . .go to my brothers and tell them, 'I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" And, like Mary Magdalene, we go forth with faith, hope, and courage to announce to those we encounter in our lives: "I have seen the Lord!” Jesus does not let Mary stay in the darkness of her pain and sorrows. Rather he tells her to live in the light of his glorious Resurrection. Our Lord does the same for us when we open our hearts to him, especially during challenging times in our lives, and turn to him saying: “Have you seen him whom my heart loves?” When we do, Jesus will call us by name and pulls us from darkness into his marvelous light.
Mary Magdalene was the first witness who saw the Risen Lord and the first messenger who proclaimed the resurrection of the Lord to the apostles. She is an example of an evangelizer who proclaims the joyful Easter message. Saint Gregory reminds us that she was the first testis divinae misericordiae (witness to divine mercy). . . Jesus had mercy on her, allowing her to recognize him as “Rabbouni”, thus transforming her tears into Easter joy. Saint Thomas Aquinas calls her the apostle to the apostles. . . because she announced to the apostles what they, in their turn, would proclaim throughout the entire world. Christ had a special consideration and mercy for this woman who showed such great love toward Him that she sought him anxiously in the garden with such suffering, with “humble tears” as Saint Anselm called them. More than that, “just as it was a woman [Eve] who was the first to announce the words of death, so it was a woman who would be the first to announce the words of life.”
According to Pope Francis, this is the lesson that we can learn from Mary Magdalene: [Jesus] says to stop “looking into the darkness of the past, into the emptiness of the tomb,” but look toward Christ. . . . There is a place for you, for me, for everyone. No one can take it, because it has always been meant for us. … Everyone can say: I have a place, I have a mission! Even a woman with a past like Mary, the one ‘from whom [Jesus] had cast out seven demons.’” Mary Magdalene gives us hope that despite our past failings, we are never far from the love and mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ our Redeemer.
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