Magdala 2024
Dear brothers and Sisters,
may the Lord give you peace!
What we are experiencing these days is a kind of spiritual conflict, if one can call it that. On the one hand, in fact, we hear every day some of the resurrection stories of the Gospels, the encounters with the risen one, the apparitions, the messages, and everything that has to do with the resurrection of Jesus. The readings from the Acts of the Apostles, which will accompany us throughout the Easter season, will also present us with the speeches of the apostles that will also accentuate the great event of the resurrection, and we will see the prospering and growth of the various and new Christian communities. In short, the Word of God that will accompany us during these days will be a word of resurrection, of a life being reborn, of communities being born and expanding.
On the other hand, as we leave our liturgies and return home, the talk is only of war, the news is discouraging, and even our communities seem burdened with so many problems, rather than full of ferment.
And we all wonder how to hold together these two elements that seem to be in contradiction to each other, how to make unity in our lives and in our communities between what we celebrate, the Easter of resurrection, and life, marked by so much pain and death.
In a sense we see this also in today's Gospel, the conclusion of Mark's Gospel. A short passage that condenses the resurrection stories of the other gospels into a few sentences. It presents us with the two ways of standing before the central event of our faith.
On one side we see Mary of Magdala, and on the other side are the disciples, “those who were with him” (Mk. 16:10), as the gospel defines them, harkening back to the very beginning of the same gospel, when Jesus calls his own “that they might be with him” (Mk. 3:14).
This short passage presents us with two different ways of standing before the mystery of the resurrection. The disciples “were mourning and weeping” (Mk 16:10); they are closed in on themselves, disappointed. Some perhaps even angry at having bet on a man, Jesus, who instead failed to live up to their expectations (“we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel” - Lk 24:21). Certainly grieved. Because they are still bound to him by affection and love (“Lord, you know that I love you” - Jn 21:16), but nevertheless confused and unable to look up and take the leap of faith. The short passage repeats three times that “they did not believe” (Mk 16:11,13,14).
On the other is Mary of Magdala, a woman, and therefore as such with no right to speak in the assemblies, excluded from any context of power. What is more, with a turbulent past, since Jesus “he had driven seven demons” (16:9) from her. Seven demons indicate total evil. A woman, in short, who was excluded from everything and moreover shrouded in sin. But she was also the woman saved by Jesus, to whom she was gratefully attached, and who never ceased to seek and follow him. And even after death, his love did not stop her. As the disciples remained locked in the Upper Room, while the two from Emmaus, disappointed, walked away from Jerusalem. The group of Jesus' friends, in short, dispersed in bewilderment (“Then the disciples returned home” - Jn 20:10), some in the Upper Room and others elsewhere, “But Mary stayed outside the tomb” (Jn 20:11), without resigning herself even in the face of an event as dramatic as death, as the disappearance of the body, or even in the face of the humanly inconceivable announcement of the resurrection. Nothing stopped her. It is the inner strength of a woman, able to see with the heart and not only with the flesh.
Resurrection stories are not disembodied, they do not tell us of a beautiful and happy reality in which we are miraculously enveloped.
Indeed, the Risen One does not reassure His own that everything will be all right, that they will have no problems. He does not say that the time of suffering is over and that from now on, finally, everything will be easy.
The Lord does not mislead, just as He had never misled anyone during the years of His earthly life: to His disciples He had proposed a demanding path, which also passed for them, as for Him, through the cross of a life given. The Lord does not deceive, because His resurrection does not impose a new era, a new way of life, on the world, but simply offers it, proposes it. And he offers it to those who believe that Easter is really a way of life, to those who believe that only that which dies in self-giving and remains alive in love and relationship is true and eternal.
Mary, then, weeps, she suffers. But she does not close herself off, does not return - like the disciples - to her steps disappointed. She continues, instead, to seek. She remained alive in love and relationship, and because of this she was then also the one through whom God, through the encounter with the risen One, reconnects with us. We could not be represented by the Virgin Mary, because She has always remained faithful; She is sinless. We, on the other hand, are sinners. It is Mary of Magdala, the forgiven sinner, therefore, who represents us. On the cross the Mother of the Lord becomes our mother, while after the resurrection it is Mary of Magdala who introduces us to the encounter with the risen one and gives us access to forgiveness. God’s covenant with man, in conclusion, is reestablished in Jesus’ encounter with Mary of Magdala.
Believing in the resurrection is not simply an inner fact. It is a way of being in life, it is a criterion behind the choices to be made, it is a way of looking at reality, it is the capacity for a free gaze on the world. It is being able to see beyond oneself and beyond the present, that is, able to see the fulfillment of the promise of eternal life that God has revealed to us in the risen Jesus, even within our sometimes so harsh realities.
The last line of the gospel speaks of proclamation, “And he said to them, «Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to every creature»” (Mark 16:15). In the gospel, believing and proclaiming are synonymous. Those who believe cannot be silent. “It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4,20).
Today Jesus also addresses to us the question put to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life … Do you believe this?” (John 11,25-26). What have we made of this mystery? How much has the consciousness that Christ is risen and alive changed our existence?
With Mary of Magdala we say today that we believe and proclaim that death is every place in life where God is absent, where man is without relationship with Him. That this is the real failure of life. Life, in fact, is not meaningless when we lack something, when we experience pain, fatigue, but when we lack the Lord, when we are alone, without Him. Death is found where God is not Father, where He is not the source of life. Where we are not able to make room for Him.
And today we believe and proclaim that God the Father has made room in the life of each of us, forever. The resurrection is the irruption of his life into ours.
Returning to the Gospel proclaimed today, let us ask where we identify ourselves today. Do we have the courage of trust and believe that indeed He is risen or are we like the disciples, who are still somehow connected to Jesus, but do not really believe, and stand still or retrace their steps.
We have been living for too long in a context of war, with its consequences of distrust, hatred, pain and death. But we are called to live the mystery of the resurrection even in this context. In the face of all this evil, the Gospel offers us two different responses: that of Mary of Magdala who runs and proclaims, and that of the unbelieving disciples.
It is up to us to make our choice.
+ Pierbattista
