John 20: 11-18
Mary Magdalene stayed outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept, he bent over the tomb and saw two angels in white sitting there, one at the head and one at the feet where the body of Jesus had been. And they said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken my Lord, and I don't know where they laid him." When she said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there, but did not know it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" She thought it was the gardener and said to him, "Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him, and I will take him." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni," which means Teacher. Jesus said to her, "Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them, 'I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" Mary went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord," and then reported what he had told her.
The Gospel of the Lord.
In the Catholic Weekly NY edition on Timothy Dolan, our new Archbishop, one commentator who knew him as the rector of the North American College in Rome, said that Dolan acts as a spiritual father to the faculty and seminarians, and by analogy to his priests, clergy and the faithful, reflecting the Rule of St. Benedict on the conduct of an abbot, that he should "arrange all things that the strong have something to strive for and the weak have nothing to fear."
So we turn to today's Gospel on the treatment of Jesus to Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene was strong enough to stay by the side of Jesus and of His mother during the time of Jesus on the cross and yet weak enough so that at His tomb, she was blinded by her tears as she sought to do her duty as she saw it. And Jesus on His way to His Father and to our Father, to His God and to our God, paused to tend to her, to call her name, "Mary!", to comfort her, and then to send her as his messenger to "His brothers" to the apostles to tell them that she had seen the Lord, that He had risen, to tell them and eventually through them to tell the whole world the message of Easter, that Jesus had risen, that Jesus had conquered death, so that we can say with St. Paul, "O Death where is your victory. O Death where is your sting."
This is one of the most beautiful passages in John's gospel. Jesus was fully man and fully God; this scene captures Jesus giving up his manhood and resuming his Godhood. The angels in the tomb each ask Mary Magdalene, "Woman, why are you weeping?" An angel is a messenger of God. Then Jesus who is the second person of God asks the same question of Mary Magdalene. "Woman, why are you weeping?" She is weeping because Jesus has died, and the angels and Jesus who are not mortal but immortal think she should not be weeping but be rejoicing because Jesus has risen - Jesus has reassumed His immortality.
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