Mary of Magdala’s mission

By Sr. Patricia Kay, O.L.M.
May/June 2011

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The raising of Lazarus convinced Caiaphas, the high priest, that it was better for one man to die for the people than for the whole nation to perish.

And so the Son of Man set his face resolutely toward Jerusalem. There he was handed over to the chief priests and the scribes who condemned Him to death. They in turn gave him to the pagans to be mocked and scourged and crucified.

But that was not the end. On the third day he rose gloriously from the dead, as he said he would.

Then early in the week, as darkness still covered the land, Mary of Magdala, whose great love proved that her many sins had been forgiven, came to the garden. Brokenhearted, all she knew was his dying. She viewed the empty tomb in dismay and ran quickly to Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved.

“He’s been taken away and I don’t know where,” she cried.

Immediately they returned. They saw that his head cloth was rolled up in a place set apart. The one Jesus loved saw and at last believed that Jesus must rise from the dead.

Mary of Magdala herself was inconsolable and through her tears looked inside again. Two angels in white sat where his body had lain.

“Why are you weeping?” they asked her.

Unafraid she answered directly, “They have taken away my Lord and I don’t know where they put him.”

Still weeping, she scarcely recognized a gardener who repeated the angels’ question.

“Sir,” she said to the gardener, “if you have taken him away, tell me and I will go and remove him.”

Then that Divine Gardener said simply, “Mary.”

“Rabbuni!” she called him in utter joy.

But she was not to cling to him because he had not yet ascended to the Father. Rather, she was to go and find the brethren and tell them what he said: “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

Full of belief and happiness and entrusted with her sacred mission, Mary of Magdala ran to those who had been his companions, now mourning and in tears. She breathlessly told them, “I have seen the Lord,” then recounted his very words to her.

But they were unconvinced and stayed fearfully behind locked doors.

He himself would have to pass through those barriers and speak, “Peace,” before they could believe. But Mary of Magdala and the other disciple knew a fully developed love that expelled every particle of fear and torture of guilt.

Easter was already theirs

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