Coffee With God

Reflection: John 20:1,11-18

Today the Church celebrates the feast of the first witness to the Risen Lord – St. Mary Magdalene. She is most remembered for her Easter testimony. She is the only woman disciple of Jesus named by all the four evangelists. Being present at the crucifixion, and at the empty tomb, she was an eyewitness to the ministry, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. And she became the first messenger of the resurrection to the other apostles – which earned her the title “Apostle of the Apostles” In the gospel of John, the first words out of Jesus’ mouth are a question: “What are you looking for?” Essentially everything that Jesus does and teaches in the rest of John’s gospel gives an answer to that question: We are looking for the way, the truth, the life, living water to quench our thirst, bread from heaven to satiate our hunger. But those answers are partially abstract. At the end of the gospel, we have this question repeated and there is the answer: On Easter Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene goes out to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus. She, but finds him in a garden (the typical place where lovers meet). But she doesn’t recognize him. Jesus turns to her and, repeating the question with which the gospel began, asks her: “What are you looking for?” Mary replies that she is looking for the body of the dead Jesus and could he give her any information as to where that body is. And Jesus simply says: “Mary”. He pronounces her name in love. She falls at his feet In essence, that is the whole gospel: What are we ultimately looking for? What is the end of all desires? What drives us out into gardens to search for love? The desire to hear God pronounce our names in love. To hear God lovingly saying our name: Jose! The following is a poem by renowned theologian Fr. Ron Rolheiser about the encounter of Mary Magdalene and Jesus in the garden. I never suspected Resurrection to be so painful… to leave me weeping With joy to have met you, alive and smiling, outside an empty tomb With regret, not because I’ve lost you but because I’ve lost you in how I had you — in understandable, touchable, kissable, clingable flesh not as fully Lord, but as graspably human. I want to cling, despite your protest cling to your body cling to your, and my, clingable humanity cling to what we had, our past. But I know that…if I cling, you cannot ascend and I will be left clinging to your former self …unable to receive your present spirit. [Fr Ronald Rolheiser, Mary Magdala’s Easter Prayer in Forgotten Among the Lillies, p176.]