Did not know it was Jesus

At 2,36-41; Ps 32; Jn 20,11-18
23 APRIL

In the Gospel according to John, the true perfect complete image of the Church is not Mary and Martha, sisters of Lazarus. It is not even Mary of Magdala. It is not other people. We must make the exception of the Mother of Jesus. She is the Mother of the Church and she is most perfect and most holy in every virtue. The Samaritan is the complete perfect and true image. Why can this woman be defined a true figure of the Church? Because, after having found her Messiah, she does not wait for Jesus to say anything else, she leaves the jug near the well and leaves Jesus to his disciples, because she has a very high mission to fulfil. She must bring her whole village to Christ because everyone needs his Messiah and Lord. The highest good she has found must be the highest good for everyone. Mary of Magdala must be a figure of the Church in her passion all poured out in search of Jesus. Not of the truth of Jesus, but of the Jesus whom she had left in his grave and that now is no longer there. She does not need truth about Christ, she needs Christ, like a thirsty person in the desert that does not need anyone to describe him the beneficial qualities of water, because he needs water to quench his thirst, to live and not to die. In this Mary of Magdala must be the immortal model.

Jesus purifies even his faith and his love. He rewards his love, his passion and his zeal in research. He reveals himself but immediately tells her to go to his brothers to give them a message of peace and hope. “Go to my brothers and tell them: I am going up to my Father and your Father, my God and your God”. In these words of Jesus there is the greatest religious revolution in the whole history of the people of Israel. So far the God of the disciples was the God of Abraham. Now it must be the God of Jesus Christ. Until now, the father of the disciples was Abraham. Now he must be the father of Christ Jesus. This religious revolution must be for every other man, including all the ancient people of God, the one born of Abraham. For every man his God must be the God of Jesus. His father must be the Father of Jesus. To reach the God and the Father of Jesus, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. He is the way that leads to the Father. The truth of the Father that makes us the truth of the Father in him. He is the life of the Father and we become the life of the Father only in Christ. Whoever does not carry out this religious revolution of welcoming his true God and Father, remains in his old humanity. He is missing in the way, truth and life. The religion in which he lives is miserable and poor; it lacks in the essential truth that is Christ Jesus.

But Mary stayed outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she bent over into 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 had 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 of Magdala went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and what he told her.

Today it is precisely this religious revolution effected by Christ and that can only be lived in Christ, with Christ and for Christ that people want to destroy. Christ has already been declared no longer the universal mediator in the relationship of life between man and God. Everyone can go to God through his own ways. They are naturally not ways of life. Christ the Lord is no longer necessary to man. Those who say this are not the enemies of Christ Jesus and his cross, those outside, they are precisely his disciples, those who should defend him from any attack on the part of falsehood and lie. Instead, it is they who have declared him no longer necessary or even useful. They deprived him of his eternal, divine and human difference of redemption and salvation. They stripped him of his uniqueness. Since the Church is from Christ, if Christ is useless, even the Church is useless. She serves nothing.

Mother of God, Angels and Saints ensure that Jesus is never declared useless by the Christian.