The Mystery of Christ
The Liturgy as Spiritual Experience

by Father Thomas Keating

Chapter 2 Part XIII

The Easter-Ascension Mystery

Mary Magdalene Meets the Risen Christ

     Mary Magdalene was lingering outside the tomb, weeping. As she was giving vent to her tears she stooped to look into the tomb, and she saw two angels in white seated where the body had lain, one at the head, the other at the feet. "Woman," they said to her, "why are you weeping?"
    "Because," she replied, "they have taken away my master and I do not know where they laid him." With this she turned around to look behind and saw Jesus standing by, but did not know that it was Jesus.
    "Woman," Jesus said to her, "why are you weeping? Who is it you are looking for?" Taking him to be the gardener, she replied, "Sir if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him. I want to remove him."
    Then Jesus said, "Mary!" Turning around she said to him in Hebrew, "Raboni!" (which means "Master").
    "Stop clinging to me," Jesus said to her. "I am ascending to the Father. Go therefore to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God.' " Mary Magdalene went to carry the message to the disciples.
[John 20:11 - 18]
Tuesday of the Octave of Easter

    The resurrection of Jesus is the first day of the New Creation. The events following the resurrection and the various appearances of Jesus to his disciples and friends are used in the liturgy to help us understand the significance of this central Mystery of our faith.

    We have seen how Jesus died in the unresolved double-bind between identification with the human condition and the loss of personal union with the Father that is the inevitable result of this identification. The resurrection of Jesus is the resolution of that double-bind. It is the answer of the Father to the sacrifice of Jesus. It opened for us, as well as for him, a totally new life. It is the decisive moment in human history: as a result, divine union is now accessible to every human being.

    The first resurrection scene is cast in a cosmic context. From the scriptural point of view, the garden in which the tomb of Jesus was situated reminds us of the garden of Eden. The two gardens are juxtaposed: in the first, the human family, in the persons of Adam and Eve, lost God's intimacy and friendship; in the second, Mary Magdalene (out of whom Jesus had cast seven devils) appears as the first recipient of the good news that intimacy and union with God are once again available.

    She came to the tomb in great distress. The huge stone, symbol of the heavy weight of sin and the downward pull of the lower levels of consciousness, had been rolled away. When the women looked in, there was nothing in the tomb but the winding cloths with which Jesus had been buried. This caused Mary to think that his body had been stolen. In her great love for Jesus, she lingered outside the tomb after the other women had gone. She looked into the tomb again just to make sure, and now she saw two angels in white. They were surprised to see someone in tears on such a joyful occasion and said, "Woman, why are you weeping?"

    She does not seem to have noticed that angels were speaking to her. She was totally absorbed in one thing only, and that was missing. She said to them, "If you have removed his body, tell me where you have put it and I will come and take it away." She was completely oblivious to the fact that Jesus' body would be too heavy for her to move. It had been anointed with a hundred pounds of myrrh, aloes and perfumed oil, so it was a hundred pounds heavier than before. But these considerations were obliterated by the intensity of her grief. Paying no further attention to these unusual personages, she started looking around in the garden. There she saw a man whom she presumed to be the gardener.

    She was not mistaken. Jesus is the gardener of the New Creation. Because of her emotional turmoil, however, she does not recognize him. This is characteristic of the post-resurrection apparitions. It is only gradually that Jesus usually manifests himself. We can presume from this fact that he had acquired a new form. Apparently Jesus did not enter into his full glory right away; it was withheld so that he could spend time with his disciples. It is only at his ascension that he enters fully into the glory that the fire of the Holy Spirit initiated at the moment of his resurrection.

    The "gardener" says with a certain irony, "Woman, whom are you looking for? Why are you weeping?" This question seems to have crystallized Mary's immense grief, and she poured out her heart in a jumble of words: "Tell me where you have laid him, sir, and I will remove him."

    Jesus then spoke her name, "Mary!" Only he could say her name in that way. Instantly, with the whole of her being, she recognized him and in that moment knew that he had risen from the dead.

    In the scripture, to be called by name has special significance. To call someone or something by name is to identify who or what it is. Adam, in paradise, named each beast and flower according to its essence. God often changed the names of prophets to fit their roles. By calling her by name, Jesus manifests his knowledge of everything in her life and his total acceptance of all that she is. This is the moment in which Mary realizes that Jesus loved her. This is the first step in her transformation.

    In the Christian scheme of things, the movement  from the human condition to divine transformation requires the mediation of a personal relationship with God. The personal love of Jesus facilitates the growth of this relationship. The experience of being loved by him draws the Christian out of all selfishness into deeper levels of self-surrender. How could this movement occur without the conviction of being personally loved by him? The simple utterance of one word, "Mary!" brought to focus all her longings. Her response was to throw herself into the arms of Jesus as she cried out in her joy, "Master!"

    The realization of being loved by God characterizes the first stage of contemplative prayer. It enables us to see God in all things. Mary's acceptance of that grace leads to a further insight; she becomes aware that she loves Jesus in return. Accordingly, she throws herself into his arms and clings to him. We are not told how long this embrace lasted, but through that experience she was raised to the next level of contemplative prayer, which is the capacity to see all things in God.

    In this conversation, Jesus is raising Mary step-by-step through the progressive stages of contemplative prayer to divine union. Finally, he says to her, "Stop clinging to me! I have not yet risen to my Father. But, go and tell my brothers that I ascend to my Father and to your Father."

    Those words are the manifesto of the New Creation! God is now not only the Father of Jesus Christ, not just the "Abba" whom Jesus has revealed out of his own personal experience of divine union. The Abba has now been given to us! The experience that Christ has of the Father is completely ours! Thus, the same relationship with the Father that Christ enjoys is rising up in Mary Magdalene--and in each of us as we assimilate the grace of Easter.

    With these words of Jesus, Mary is sent to be the apostle of the apostles. What makes an apostle is divine love, nothing else. Since she now had within herself the experience of intimacy with the Father, bestowed upon her by Jesus, she is the one who proclaims to the apostles the message of Easter. "You, my brother," Jesus says through her, "have been initiated into the reign of God, into my experience of the Father as Abba, the God if infinite compassion."

    Jesus, in the plan of God, has opened the way to the highest states of consciousness. The pain and agony of self-consciousness, with its guilt-ridden sense of responsibility, has been replaced by the invitation to enter into the human potential for unlimited growth. The Garden of Eden is both a memory of what could be and a preview of what is to come. In the Garden of the Resurrection the full revelation of the Mystery of Christ in unveiled. And with that knowledge and experience, Mary reaches the third level of contemplative prayer, the abiding state of divine union, which is to see God giving himself in everything. This is the transformed consciousness of inner resurrection. And this is the Good News she was sent to announce to the apostles.

    Adam and Eve were thrown out of the first garden as a result of the emergence of their self-consciousness apart from divine union. Mary was so rooted in the experience of divine union that the Garden of Paradise was inside her and she could never leave it. The Garden of Eden stands for a state of consciousness, not a geographical location. She is sent out of the garden, but with the abiding interior state the garden represents: the certitude of being loved by God, of loving him in return, and of God giving himself in every event and at every moment, both within or without. In this state, outside and inside are in harmony; they have become one. In the course of this conversation, the Ultimate Mystery becomes for Mary the Ultimate Presence, and the Ultimate Presence becomes the Ultimate Reality.

    The outpouring of grace that we see in this first appearance of Jesus after his resurrection is God's response to Christ's sacrifice; it is his glorification in response to his utter humiliation. Like Mary Magdalene, Christ is also calling us by name as we celebrate the feast of his resurrection.

More information can be obtained by reading the book The Mystery of Christ by Fr. Thomas Keating.  It is offered in our Book Store.