A Devastating Discovery Transformed by a Personal Encounter

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Mary Magdalene, the apostle to the apostles,  the one Jesus sent to tell the apostles that He had risen from the dead. We pray in the “Collect” of the Mass, “O God, whose Only Begotten Son entrusted Mary Magdalene before all others   (emphasis mine) with announcing the great joy of the Resurrection, grant, we pray, that through her intercession and example we may proclaim the living Christ and come to see him reigning in your glory.”

The Gospel recounts that  first Easter morning. Mary is desperately eager to go to the tomb to give Jesus’ body the proper anointing that was not possible when they took His body off the cross. There was not time before the Passover restrictions would have been applied. So she rushes to the tomb that Easter morn. It is still dark. She finds the stone removed from the entrance of the tomb and the tomb empty.  She stands outside the tomb, occasionally bending in peering into the darkness of the tomb, hoping his body is really there. She sees “two angels in white sitting… one at the head and one at the feet where the Body of Jesus had been.  ‘Woman, why are you weeping?”  Where, O where, have they taken my Lord, she cries out.  The risen Jesus is standing right behind her. She turns and sees him but does not recognize him. “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you laid him, and I will take him.” “Mary,” He says, and she immediately recognizes Him.

Crucifixion! Darkness! Empty tombs!  Only  gardeners! Nobodies!  The scene repeated over and over again in the history of the world! Crucifixions, scourging, “crownings” with thorns, empty “tombs,” no bodies to be found, the “living” not even recognized they are so downtrodden, beaten, left for dead, unrecognized.  We pass the homeless and hardly steal a glance! Children are in unsafe situations and we hardly notice!  Women and men are being “whipped into submission” and we hardly notice. “Tombs”—no life worth living in neighborhoods and refugee camps across the globe! “Mary,” Jesus says, and the devastingly, dark emptiness of the tomb experience is transformed by a personal encounter! Do I realize that I have the same power among "the tombs" of today?