April 18th, 2017: Easter Tuesday: John 20:11-18.
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 told the young man, 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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