One of the most interesting stories in Scripture is St. John the Evangelist’s account of the encounter between the risen Christ and Mary Magdalene. In detailed description—possibly provided to John by Mary Magdalene herself—we read that Christ appeared to her as she wept near his empty tomb. But he would not let her touch him: “Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father,” he says (Jn 20:17).
To us, his words seem formal and cold. Yet, upon further reflection I think they tell a profound truth about the kind of the relationship each of us is called to have with the risen Christ—and with each other.
Mary Magdalene in popular tradition is thought to be the same woman from whom Christ had “expelled seven demons” (Lk 8:2), the sister of Martha and Lazarus who sat at the Lord’s feet ignoring her household chores (Lk 10:42), and the woman who poured expensive ointment on Christ’s feet and bathed them with her tears (Lk 7:37-38).
Clearly, she was a woman of great passion, a woman who lived life intensely. Before her encounter with Christ, she seems to have pursued whatever she wanted, grabbing, gobbling, devouring whatever and whomever would satisfy her. Like so many of us, Mary Magdalene passionately took care of her Self!
Yet her encounter with Christ transformed her, not into a subdued, dutiful person, but a woman whose passion now was completely focused on an Other. St. Teresa of Ávila wrote of this new Mary: “What a sight it must have been in the town to see such a woman as she had been making this change in her life!”
Mary Magdalene became a woman of passionate love for Jesus Christ. She loved him so much that she was not afraid to go anywhere with him, even to the cross. She had forgotten about her Self to the point where she disregarded her own safety. She probably didn’t care if she was killed; she could not live without him. “I think myself,” agrees St. Teresa, “that the reason she was not granted martyrdom was that she had already undergone it through witnessing the Lord’s death.”
Given this passionate love for him, imagine how she felt when she saw him again. Her greatest desire must have been to hold him close and never let go. Yet, even here, he asked her to focus not on her Self, but on him. Stop holding on to me, he said. Although it must have been excruciating, she did just as he asked, putting her Self aside to care for the Other. And how he must have loved her at that moment, knowing exactly what was in her heart! And how completely satisfied she must have been when she saw the depth of love in his eyes.
The Gospel message is as simple as this: if we act like Mary Magdalene in her former life, gobbling, devouring, and satisfying only our Selves, we will never be happy. We will never have the kind of passionate, intense life we all so deeply desire. Only by freely giving ourselves away to Christ in complete love and surrender—and by loving and serving him through the people he has put into our lives—only then will our hearts be fulfilled.
Even after Christ ascended into heaven, tradition says that St. Mary Magdalene’s love and passion for him never waned, sustained by the Eucharist and the community of his disciples in the Church. Perhaps she found his presence, too, in his Word spoken by the Bride in the Song of Songs: “When I found him whom my heart loves, I took hold of him and would not let him go” (Sg 3:4). Because she had “loved much,” Mary Magdalene knew that this eternal union that never ends is the heaven promised to each one of us.
©Magnificat April 2000
