SEEING JESUS THROUGH THE EYES OF MARY MAGDALENE
“Mary went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord!’” – Jn. 20:18
I have been thinking about Mary Magdalene a lot lately – who she was a person and how she was in Jesus’ life. I view her as this beautiful woman, inside and out who had an endless caring love for her friend Jesus. Well, I went on a silent retreat in the beginning of March, and Mary Magdalene was there with me the whole time. It first started when I was assigned a room with her icon. Every morning when I was trying to get ready for the day, something seemed to go wrong, and it felt impossible to get out the door. One particular morning my perfume bottle shattered on the ground and that made me upset. I later looked up what she was the patron saint of, and I found that she is the patron saint of perfumers. In all of those small battles in the morning, she was trying to show me that I am good enough, and she was trying to tell me she was there, helping me along my faith journey. Mary was trying to show me that I don’t have to be perfect all the time, inside and out, just like she was. Since these experiences, I feel that I have been looking at Jesus through the eyes of Mary Magdalene.
In today's Gospel, Mary Magdalene is crying at the tomb of Jesus thinking he is missing. Since Mary Magdalene has been helping me see Jesus with her eyes, I feel as if it was me at the tomb of Jesus crying. On Palm Sunday when the passion was proclaimed, I found myself secretly crying in the pew. I couldn’t get myself to say the crowd part when they shouted, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” I felt as if I was Mary, in the back of the crowd, watching all this happen, not wanting my dear friend to die. In today’s gospel when Mary finds out she is talking to Jesus, it gave me this excitement as if I was talking to a good friend I haven’t seen in a while. What joy Mary must have felt that her friend wasn’t missing and rose from the dead!
During Lent, where did you picture yourself in Jesus’ life during his suffering and death? Let us borrow the eyes of Mary Magdalene so we can love Jesus and be joyous that our dear friend and savior has risen.
Kaleila Simon