Love Restores

Gospel reflection: John 20:11-18

Today’s readings can be found on the USCCB website.

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Photo of Mosaic of Mary Magdalene, at Church of Saint Mary Magdalene, taken by Deror Avi, accessed via Wikipedia Commons.

No breath escaped those laboured lungs, 

the sun went dark that day. 

Upon that rock they watched their hopes 

and dreams disintegrate.

Mary is the epitome of one of Jesus’ disciples. She traveled with him, heard him preach, teach, and watched him heal and enact God’s wonders. She believed, like the others, that he was the Messiah, the Anointed one. The intimacy he held with his disciples was strong; they considered themselves students under a great Teacher who cared for each of them personally. Mary’s ardent love for him gave its evidence as she stood under his cross with the other women and the beloved disciple. Now it is testified by her drawing near to his tomb, a second time that day.

I’ve known grief that’s made my thoughts blurry, memory fuzzy, and my body disillusioned and as though walking through mist, but it’s hard for me to imagine the grief of losing a loved one who has cared so greatly for me and who was tied up with hopes for a new Kingdom, a new way of life - a new relationship with God and the world. The one she thought she knew had died on a cross. The scriptures said one who dies on a tree is cursed by God, not blessed as Messiah; those hopes burned hot, flames reflected in her eyes. The form of those hopes was rendered to ashes that day. Yet even knowing this, it was not enough to prevent her from being drawn to where he lay lifeless.

She sees the angels, she interacts with them as though commonplace. How deeply did her grief run that they were not cause of fright or wonder? Could it be that she was so shattered that the line between real and unreal was blurred and veiled? She seems to be reaching out to hold onto some hope, to some reality: “They have taken my Lord, and I don’t know where they laid him.” Though it was a lifeless body, it was real; it was something that could ground her. It was in Jesus, after all, that she had found what was truly real.

Yet silent in its early rise 

from ashes does it reach – 

when Light breaks forth and radiates

cirriform past the breach.

Seeing as though through mist, she encounters a person and inquires of him similarly as to the angels. But Jesus calls her name and suddenly, the vapour that blurred her vision vanquishes. She sees and knows her reality again: her Teacher is there, standing before her and calling her name! “Rabbouni!” She wants to take hold of him, grasp onto that reality, but he says, “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.’”

Saint Mary Magdalene by Juliusza (Julian) Makarewicz (1854–1936) above the tabernacle in the main altar of the church of St. Mary Magdalene in Chorzów, Poland.

And somewhere in this encounter, she realises that not only is this her Teacher, the one she loved, but another mist has been dually lifted - she sees that her Rabbouni is also the Holy One of Israel, as she proclaims to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.” The Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Lord is one and the same as Rabbouni.

The mirth with which that Love called out 

could only touch unfettered

the one who could be open to

God on the cross, transfigured.

Mary’s experience holds for us, too. Veiled from our sight is the Son still; the tunic he wears is not made of cloth, but the flesh of humanity.¹ Can we reach out to those around us with the same hope to which Mary clung? Can we look even to strangers and see our Lord and Saviour patiently and gently calling our name?

I daresay that if we hope to encounter him in all whom we meet, he will not fail to lift the veil for us to glimpse his image and likeness, if only we would greet the other in that same love, seeking the beloved.

So let’s seek our beloved in those unexpected. Let’s prove our hope by ourselves being that Love, manifested.² And maybe they’ll come to know our beloved by his own love in us.

The Light by which disciples see 

their resurrected Saviour

comes to those who ardently 

pursue this hope with candor.

1. Hildegard of Bingen, Book of Divine Works, 1.4.100 (p. 237-8): “But when God looked upon Man, he was very well pleased, for he had created him according to the tunic of his own image and according to his own likeness, that Man might declare all God’s wonders through the trumpet of the rational voice.”

2. Hildegard, 2.1.46 (p. 342): “‘And in all their works, as [believers] climb to my Father with the will for perfection and often carry him within heart and body, they are my [the Son’s] mother—for thus they give me birth when, with the full zeal of holiness, I blossom in my Father through the fullness of the blessed virtues.’”