Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early in the morning,
while it was still dark,
and saw the stone removed from the tomb.
Something continued to draw Mary Magdalene toward Jesus even after all earthly hope had failed, even when no rational explanation could provide solace. When she saw that the tomb had been opened her mind didn't immediately jump to credulous hope. She couldn't help but supply conventional explanations. Someone must have taken the body from the tomb. Yet there was something deeper going on within Mary that even her own rational explanations could not entirely sabotage. She gave answers as if to explain everything. But her heart somehow made her remain. Her mind was in darkness. But the love in her will somehow kept her in the place where she was meant to be.
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."
Mary's heart was too deeply in sorrow to have any capacity left to be impressed by the angels in the tomb. They were there to mark the place of the resurrection and perhaps to provide answers to those who asked. But Mary's thoughts were too obscured to ask them what there business was in the tomb. Instead she repeated her explanation for what, in her mind, must have happened. And yet Mary, by her love, was still seeking Jesus, just as the Bride in Song of Songs sought him whom her heart loved during the darkness of night.
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?
Mary had been so crushed by the events of the death of Jesus that she couldn't recognize the angels in the tomb as angels, or even Jesus himself. In some ways the sights may have been so impossible that her rational mind rejected them outright. As with others her eyes may have been prevented from recognizing Jesus until the moment he himself had precisely chosen. All of these appearances only struck her as obstacles to her most important goal, that of finding the body of her Lord. On her own this desire was not enough to recognize the new day that had dawned in the resurrection and to identify the risen Lord in her midst. But it was precisely this desire that placed her in exactly the position to be the first to receive the good news.
Jesus said to her, "Mary!"
She turned and said to him in Hebrew,
"Rabbouni," which means Teacher.
What the dazzling appearance of the risen Jesus could not convey to Mary was communicated by his speaking her name. Jesus had promised that he knew his sheep, that he called them by name, and that they recognized his voice.
The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out (see John 10:3).
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me (see John 10:27).
Even when faith leads us into a dark night where no hope is readily apparent Jesus is more than able to speak a word to our hearts that changes everything in an instant. A world that formerly seemed dark and without hope, even worse then than the one we found when we started our journey, can be revealed to be entirely renewed by the light of the resurrection. Jesus had previously called the name of Lazarus to summon him from death and from the tomb. In a way it was as if he did the same thing here for Mary Magdalene who seemed to have mystically participated in the death of Jesus and who now needed to be called forth into new life.
A time is coming and is here now when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who listen will live (see John 5:25).
Because of the great love Mary Magdalene had for her Lord she was hardly willing to let him go a second time now that she had found him at last. But this sort of prolonged repose with Jesus was not yet to be. There was still a mission for his disciples and for the Church. And it was a mission that would begin and be inaugurated by Mary's own mission to the disciples. By all that she had gone through she became an ideal first witness to the resurrection. By speaking her name Jesus freed her from darkness, gave her new life as his own brother, and therefore as a daughter of God, and made her the apostle to the Apostles.
Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples,
"I have seen the Lord,"
and then reported what he told her.
So the sin of mankind is buried in the very place whence it came forth. For whereas in Paradise the woman gave the man the deadly fruit, a woman from the sepulchre announced life to men; a woman delivers the message of Him who raises us from the dead, as a woman had delivered the words of the serpent who slew us.
- Saint Gregory
Today let us thank Mary Magdalene for her witness, since it has at last made its way through generations and years to us. And let us in turn be elevated from whatever darkness threatens to overwhelm us to become, like her, witnesses to the risen Christ.
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