Mary of Magdala’s Easter Prayer:
I never suspected Resurrection to be so painful… to leave me weeping
With joy to have met you, alive and smiling, outside an empty tomb.
With regret, not because I’ve lost you but because I’ve lost you in how I had you — in understandable, touchable, kissable, clingable flesh not as fully Lord, but as graspably human.
I want to cling, despite your protest cling to your body cling to your, and my, clingable humanity cling to what we had, our past.
But I know that…if I cling, you cannot ascend and
I will be left clinging to your former self …unable to receive your present spirit.
On Easter Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene goes out to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus. But she finds him in a garden (the typical place where lovers meet). But she doesn’t recognize him. Jesus turns to her and, repeating the question with which the gospel began, asking her: “What are you looking for?” Mary replies that she is looking for the body of the dead Jesus, and could he give her any information as to where that body is. And Jesus simply says: “Mary.” He pronounces her name in love. She falls at his feet.
In essence, that is the whole gospel: What are we ultimately looking for? What is the end of all desires? What drives us out into gardens to search for love? The desire to hear God pronounce our names in love. To hear God lovingly saying our name: Daniel! [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Mary Magdala’s Easter Prayer,” April 1985]