Tuesday of the 16th Week in
Ordinary Time
Memorial of St. Mary Magdalene
July 22, 2014 6:30am
In this gospel passage, Mary
Magdalene emerges as a model of faith.
We see, right within these few
verses, the growth of Mary’s faith.
First, Mary Magdalene arrives at
the tomb while it is still dark.
The darkness is literal – the sun
apparently had not yet risen.
And the darkness is also symbolic
– it stands for Mary’s darkness and our darkness when we do not fully
understand Jesus or who Jesus is.
Then, Mary notices that the stone
has been rolled away.
She is still thinking that Jesus
is dead and that someone has stolen his body.
Then, Mary’s first awareness of
something special or extraordinary taking place is when she returns to the tomb
and sees two angels there.
They ask her, “Why are you weeping?”
This is the first inkling that we
are not dealing here simply with Jesus’ death.
Then, Jesus appears to Mary but
she does not at first recognize him.
When she does eventually
recognize him, she at first calls him “Rabbouni”
which simply means “teacher.”
Finally, after she listens to
Jesus, she goes and tells the other disciples, “I have seen the Lord.”
So, notice her growth in faith or
growth in her relationship with the Lord.
Mary moves from darkness to
increasing light; from not recognizing Jesus to speaking of him as a teacher to
finally to talk of him as the Lord, as God himself.
I recommend that her message to
us is to keep growing in our own faith.
We are never to stop growing in
our appreciation of who Jesus is, of what our relationship to him can be, of
how we pray and what expectations he makes of us in daily life.
We always have more to learn and
more space for growing in relation to the Almighty.
