TELL ME WHERE YOU LAID HIM, AND I WILL TAKE HIM

At 2,36-41; Ps 32; Jn 20,11-18
3 APRIL
Peter and Giovanni after having noticed everything, leave the garden. They leave. On the other hand, Mary of Magdala, does not even enter the sepulchre, she remains outside and cries. She does not care about the high, very high, profound truths about Christ. These are of little use. Her heart does not love the truths of Christ, she loves Christ the truth of her heart, of her soul, of her spirit and of her will. She does not care to know all the science about the sun. She wants to live under the shadow of the sun, letting herself be vivified by its rays. Christ is dead. His body is no longer there. It is as if it had disappeared into nothingness. She does not give up and keeps looking. This is the purest truth of faith: always seeking, without ever stopping. She needs a certainty: knowing where the body of Christ is. Neither does she think about the resurrection. It is outside her heart and mind.

She seeks and the Lord comes to her help. While she cries, “she bends down to the tomb and sees two angels in white robes, one sitting on one side of the head and the other on the side of the feet, where Jesus’ body was placed”. A question is asked her: “Woman, why are you crying?” Her answer is immediate: “They have taken my Lord away and I do not know where they have placed him”. She cries because she does not know where to find her Lord’s body. She lost the life of her life, the breath of her spirit, the soul of her soul and the heart of her heart. In the face of such a loss, one must necessarily cry. She does not even wait for the answer. She turns back and sees Jesus, but she does not know that it is Jesus. Jesus also asks her the same question: “Woman why are you crying?” Thinking of that man as the guardian of the garden, she makes him an explicit request: “Lord, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have placed him and I will go and get him”. She does not care what he did. She is interested in finding the body of her Master. He reveals her the place and she will go and get it. True love transforms life into one thought. When there are a thousand thoughts in love, it is always impure. Now Mary has only one thought: finding the body of Jesus. Everything else is useless for her. True love is not satisfied with thoughts, but with presence. Paradise is the eternal presence of the righteous with their God and Lord in Christ. Faith is also a path towards the attainment of a perfect abode in Christ and in God through the Holy Spirit. Truth helps, but it can never replace presence, abode and habitation.

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.

Jesus reveals himself to her, but not so that she makes herself a tent to be with him. This would be a true sepulchre of love. On the contrary, every day Jesus wants her to make him be raised to new life in her heart and from her heart make him be spread into the world. Today, she must begin with “her brothers”, that is, from the disciples. She must go to them and bring a clear, strong message: “I am going up to my Father and your Father, my God and your God”. With the resurrection the history in his body of flesh ends for Jesus, now begins his new history in his spiritual, incorruptible, glorious, of light and immortal body. Now Christ will have to continue his history on earth by using the body, the soul, the spirit of each one of his disciples. Even Mary will have to give her whole life to Christ so that through it he can fulfil the mystery of redemption and salvation. If Jesus does not live through the disciple, the body of the disciple is transformed into a tomb, into a sepulchre, in which a true process of putrefaction of truth and faith begins.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints, make us a body in the service of Jesus.