My favorite post-resurrection account is from the Gospel of John, in which Mary Magdalene, weeping, returns to the empty tomb of Jesus, looking for his missing body. Two angels at the tomb ask her why she is weeping. She responds, ““They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” As she says this, she turns and seeing a man she assumes is a gardener asks him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Unbeknownst to Mary, the gardener is really Jesus. Moved, he then speaks her name, “Mary.” Realizing it is Jesus, she says, “Rabbouni!” Jesus tells her, ““Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.” He then tells her to go the apostles and tell them that he is ascending to his Father, “to my God and your God.” Mary quickly returns to the apostles and tells them, “I have seen the Lord!” (NRSV Bible)
The poignancy of this post-resurrection story is beautifully expressed in a poem, entitled, “Mary”, composed by the poet, Elizabeth Rooney.
Mary
The Love I love
Came in the early dawning
Standing as still as light.
How could I ever have dreamed
So sweet a morning
After so dark a night? (from A Widening Light:Poems of the Incarnation, Luci Shaw, editor, (c) 1984, Regent College Publishing)
During this past Holy Week, four members of our faith community, Ralph Weiers, Robert Koppinger, Bernice Lambrecht, and Delores Hoffman passed from this life to the fullness of life, some of them dying during the Easter Triduum, when the Paschal Mystery of Jesus is beautifully and powerfully celebrated in the highest liturgies of the Church year. After years of diminishing health, all four fell into the eternal loving embrace of Jesus. I believe the last few lines of this poem, “How could I ever have dreamed, So sweet a morning After so dark a night?” was on their lips as Jesus lovingly spoke their name. May their grieving families and all of us who grieve similarly take comfort in these same words.
