An Easter Reflection on John 20:11-18

e read her story in the Gospel of John (20:11-18) … But it would be more appropriate to say that we hear a passage from the gospel of Mary of Magdala: a personal gospel within the account of John’s Gospel.

It is a time in which the “apocryphal gospels” have become quite famous not only among New Testament scholars but also among the general public.

People are curious to know different versions of Jesus’ life: new parables, amazing miracles and stories that conserve a sense of immediateness and wonder that the orthodox version of the “correct” gospels have somehow veiled, purged or spiritualized. This explains the popularity of the Gospel of Thomas, which provides the secret script for the movie “Stigmata.”

But you will be surprised to know that there are number of apocryphal gospels that carry like the Gospel of James, the Gospel of Nicodemus, The Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Philip, the Secret Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of the Pseudo-Matthew, and even the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. It is not my intention here to draw from any of these “apocrypha gospels.”

What strikes me as original and beautiful is the idea of an ordinary person, like Mary Magdalene, writing her own gospel. She tells us the good news of a personal encounter with Jesus that has became for her an event of total liberation. From that moment she started interpreting her own story as a history of salvation.

“Easter is the victory of life over the powers of death that keep us chained to ancient schemes of judgment, hierarchies, doubts and fears that separate us from our own selves and from one another.”

Mary of Magdala was the first to go to the tomb very early that morning, the first day of the week. She saw that the stone had been moved away from the tomb, and so she ran to call Peter and John. They came, entered the tomb, saw the linen clothes lying on the ground, but the gospel says: “They failed to understand the teaching of the scripture that he must rise from the dead. The disciples went home again” (John 21:9-10).

We know from this account that it is not through vision, knowledge or factual proof that we will understand the mystery of the resurrection. Mary’s gospel invites us to follow another way to pass from the visible to the invisible, from sense knowledge to faith; from the Jesus of history to the risen Christ whose spirit fills the universe.

The Gospel continues. Mary, meanwhile “stayed outside” near the tomb, weeping. The man whom she loved was dead and now his body, which she embalmed with precious ointments, was taken away.

I imagine that it must have been at this moment, in a state of solitude and grief that Mary began an inner journey of memories, broken hopes and perhaps despair. In this state of mind she enters in a silent dialogue with the angels, then she envisions someone she thinks is a gardener, and suddenly she hears her name: “Mary!” Immediately she recognizes Jesus’ voice and replies: “Rabbuni!”

In a commentary of this gospel, … one of the early Fathers of the Church imagined Jesus’ dialogue with Mary Magdalene to go like this: “Woman, why are you weeping? Indeed you are crying outside of an empty tomb. Your heart is my tomb. Mary, I have risen and from now on I live in you”.

Unlike other witnesses of the resurrection, Mary doesn’t see a ghost walking on the waters; or a phantom eating fish on the beach and then disappearing.

Mary looks inward and stays in touch with her feelings of loss and emptiness. While she is immersed in this experience of void she hears her name and she immediately knows that Jesus is alive, and that she is alive. Mary experiences the power of Jesus’ resurrection in the discovery of herself as another… : as she is known in God’s merciful love.

Mary is called to exist in the freedom of this love and to proclaim this Gospel of Life and Resurrection to the disciples and to the world. Mary, now freed from all what kept her in bondage, becomes the witness of the resurrection to others. So, if you are searching for the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection in your life, do not look outside at an empty tomb. Look inside yourself.

Let the spirit of the risen Christ guide you to interpret your personal history as a history of salvation.

Write your own gospel !

Let your life tell the good news of encountering Jesus in the depth of your personal story. The resurrection, as I was given to experience it for myself, and as I am interpreting from Mary’s gospel, is the discovery of God’s love and compassion transforming our history of sin into a history of salvation.

Easter is the victory of life over the powers of death that keep us chained to ancient schemes of judgment, hierarchies, doubts and fears that separate us from our own selves and from one another. We have become perpetrators of the deadly programming inherited through the genes of our fathers and mothers. 

The light of Jesus’ resurrection melts these structures of sin and frees us into a realm of freedom, immediacy, joy, love and compassion that embraces self and others in the celebration of life. 

This I take to be the Good News according to Mary’s gospel

This gospel has been preserved in the “Sequence” that is read in the Catholic liturgy on Easter Sunday:

“Speak, Mary, tell us what you saw on the way?  |  The tomb of Christ, who is living,
The glory of Jesus’ resurrection;  |  Bright angels attesting:  |  The shroud and napkin resting.
Yes, Christ my hope is risen:   |  To Galilee he goes before you.”

Xaverian Missionary Father Vittorio Falsina gave this reflection on Easter Sunday 2000, while a Professor at the Center for Study of World Religions @ Harvard University. He died in a car accident (Aug. 24, 2001). He was 38. He’s missed…