Homily for April 22nd, 2014: John 20:1-18.
Mary Magdalene
“saw Jesus … but did not know it was Jesus,” we just heard in the gospel. That
was the experience of almost all those to whom Jesus appeared after his
resurrection. Why? Jesus had not returned to his former life. He had been
raised to a new life, beyond death.
His appearance was somehow changed. Mary Magdalene realized it was the Lord
standing before her only when he spoke her name. The gospel reading does not
tell us how she reacted. We can easily infer this, however, from Jesus’ words: “Do
not cling to me! Go to my brothers with the news that [I am] risen.”
A young man thinking
of priesthood told the priest who was helping him with his vocational decision that
he had finally found courage to send in his application for admission to one of
the Church’s religious orders for men. A few days after he received word of his
acceptance into the novitiate, he was driving down the highway when he thought
of a girl he had known. “She’d be the perfect
wife for me,” he thought. “Am I crazy, throwing away that chance for
happiness?” He got so upset that he prayed: “’Lord, you’re going to have to
help me.’ Immediately, he said, “the Lord came to me so strongly that the tears
ran down my cheeks, and I had to pull off the road.”
“Johnny,” the
priest told him, “the Lord came to you to strengthen your faith and your
decision to serve Him as a priest. You must be thankful for that. But don’t try
to hold on to that spiritual experience by running the video over again in your
head. That is spiritual gluttony.”
Then the
priest told him about Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Lord, and
Jesus’ command to her: “Do not cling to me,” but go to my brothers with the
news of my resurrection. Every encounter with the Lord is given to us not just
for ourselves, the priest said, to give us a nice warm spiritual experience
inside. The Lord comes to us to send us to others – his brothers and sisters;
yes, and ours too.
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