Like Mary, do we really see, hear, know this Christ?

Father Perry D. Leiker, pastor.

A reflection on the daily readings, for Tuesday of the Octave of Easter (day 2 of 8), by Father Perry.

By Father Perry D. Leiker, pastor

+ Well, a little shared commentary produced a lot of fruit today.

Peter gets right to the point in the Acts, as he tells many of the need to repent and to go through a literal turning away from sin and their sins and going through a metanoia — or conversion.

When we experience true conversion, we actually do turn and see things differently. We see as Christ sees things, and we talk as Christ talks. We even walk where and how he walks.

As Paul says in another place —

“Put on Christ!”

It’s not unlike putting on a new garment. Just maybe, some will look at us and mistake us for looking just like Christ!

And Peter must have been very convincing, for a mere 3,000 people were baptized that very day by that very speech.

But here in the Gospel, the commentators find some very interesting detail in a very simple story. Here, also, we see the mastery of Luke. Here Mary of Magdala apparently went back to the tomb, which she had been to before when she first experienced the empty tomb and was told by an angel to go report what she saw to the disciples.

Now, absorbed in her grief, she has another angelic experience. The time she is questioned by the two angels —

“Woman, why are you weeping?”

As she answers directly, begging to know where those who (she is thinking) stole the body of Jesus and put it somewhere else, Jesus himself is suddenly there whom Mary mistakes for the gardener.

Mary does not recognize him as Jesus. Jesus asks the same question as the angels had asked. Then when Jesus calls Mary by name, Mary recognizes him.

Now to the details

A garden. Interesting. Sin happened in the Garden of Eden story. The power of sin was broken, destroyed, and conquered in another Garden, where the dead body of Jesus lain.

And a very much alive Jesus was revealing to a woman, first of all, his resurrected self. As Mary “clung to him,” he spoke of needing, or having gone to the Father; somehow, this was going to then bring all to the Father and the Father to them.

There is a little mystery here; somehow, Jesus has to go “full circle” to complete something here. Mary calls him “rabboni,” which is apparently more formal than “rabbi,” and apparently was used when speaking to God.

And then turning to Jesus seems to happen twice within the same few verses. She physically turned to him, saw him, but didn’t recognize him, and mistook him to be the gardener.

As he called her by name, she turned again to him. Perhaps, some note, this was a deeper turning. An inner turning. A turning within her deepest spirit to really see and hear and know him more than ever before.

Perhaps this was an even deeper metanoia and conversion moment for Mary.

So Mary, a woman, who stood by the cross of Jesus with him until the end — not like the men who ran away scared and left Jesus alone to die on the cross — was now the first to really see the risen Christ and the glorified one.

She can be said to be the first disciple to have the experience of the Christ, now gloriously proclaimed as the Christ through his death and resurrection.

Now, readers of the Gospel, what about us? Have we “turned” to really see, hear, and know this Christ?

Is and does our discipleship keep turning, and growing deeper and deeper each day? Are we, indeed, being led by this woman’s story of the Christ to our own story?

And, just maybe, our whole life is a story of “turning, turning, turning,” as “the beat goes on.”