Sunday Readings: Acts 10.34, 37-43; Colossians 3.1-4 (Vigil: Mark 16.1-7); John 20.1-18
“I have seen the Lord,” Mary Magdalene announces to the community of Jesus’ disciples when she returns from encountering her Teacher on Easter morning (John 20.18). Jesus sends her as the apostle to the apostles to tell them, “I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” We share Jesus’ relationship with God. That’s a wow.
In Mark’s gospel Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and Salome find the tomb empty and hear from a young man in white that Jesus is risen. In the other three gospels Mary Magdalene is first to encounter Jesus risen and first to announce the good news to the other disciples. She is the apostle to the apostles, the first to believe in Jesus risen. “I have seen the Lord.”
Her five words of testimony invite us to reflect about where and in whom we have seen the Lord. Faith in Jesus continues today because people keep living the gospel. We can see the Lord in their lives.
Personally I am a late comer to relationship with Jesus. It is creation that awakened me to divine presence in the world— in the flowering ditches of my childhood and the meadows of mountain hikes. It is the wonder of seeds sprouting, rooting, growing, multiplying that grounds my faith.
In my deepest adult experience of God it is the Spirit I found underlying my existence, affirming I was okay. In the liturgical year over time, I have met Jesus in every gospel. This Sunday and in every Eucharist we invite Jesus to easter in us, his brothers and sisters. Now that I am older and go to funerals for family and friends more frequently,
I see the Lord in lives lived long and slowly, lives poured out over years of days for spouses and children, for the good of neighbor and the common civic good.
- In whom do you see the Lord?