Today, July 22, is the Feast Day of St. Mary Magdalene – one of my most cherished saints of the Church. The story of her meeting with the Risen Jesus in the garden, told in John 20, is really the origin story of Christianity, if you think about it. And I think/hope we are coming to remember Mary as the first apostle – the one who followed Jesus’s instructions to “Go and Tell” his disciples about how everything has changed with the Resurrection. It’s the message for us to grasp today.
And I’ve been drawn by the story behind the story se have – of the intimate friendship between Jesus and Mary. Two poems I wrote many years ago still capture for me both the power of the message Mary carried to the other disciples, and the way that her calling arose from the depth of her friendship with Jesus, her teacher, whom she called Rabbouni:. Here are the poems
The Embrace in the Garden
How can you say, “Don’t try to hold me?”
Wrenched from my weeping
Into your unreasonable joy
I heard you speak my name
Knew it was you
You, and more than you, more than I can grasp
But now, my cheek against your cheek,
Your hand stroking my hair,
I whisper the name I have always used for you
Rabboni!
Mary!
Rabboni!
You whisper, delighted, of going and telling
But how could I not want to hold you here
Cheek against cheek,
Nail-scarred hands upon hair?
Going and Telling
Go. Tell my friends. I am giving you the words. Tell them.
It is finished, and the new story has begun.
The body that holds you now
Alive and warm, is as real
As the body you saw mutilated,
Mocked, betrayed, brutalized.
Even though jeers drowned out the message
Of justice for the poor,
Release for the oppressed,
Unimagined forbearance,
Even though
It seems as though the promise I brought
Was pounded down
With the nails
They drove into these hands
Go and tell them:
They cannot kill it.
Step back. Take these wounded hands.
Clasp them in your own.
Gaze back at me, and see
The dancing in my eyes.
Now go.
Go and tell them
This life you are holding
Nothing can kill it.
Go. Go and tell them
You will see me
Again.