In today’s Gospel Mary Magdalen is highlighted as the woman
who is the first witness of the resurrection. Mary and the two disciples must
have been very confused and upset as they tried to understand what had happened
to Jesus’s body. Reading this story can bring many emotions for us: fear and
confusion at death, or even a feeling of euphoria and joy at the realisation
that death is not the end. If we have lost a loved one, we might feel comforted
in the knowledge that we will be reunited with them once more. Jesus comes into
situations of despair, disappointment and doubt and, as with Mary after this
incident, comes in the form of a stranger, gently calling her name. The Risen
Lord seems to meet us in familiar territory, where we least expect it.
We might ask the Lord today for the strength and courage to
allow him to break into our lives once more, to help us to be free of whatever
it is that causes ‘death’ in our lives, to help us to let go, to be open to
recognising him in our most painful moments and in the most familiar places.
“God of openness, of life and of resurrection, Come into this Easter
season and bless me. Look around at the tight, dead spaces of my heart. Bring
your gentle but firm love… Open me. Open me. Open me. For it is only then I
will grow and change, for it is only then that I will be transformed. For it is
only then that I will know how it is. To be in the moment of rising from the
dead.” (Joyce Rupp)
