By Allison Auth
This Advent, I’ve found myself reflecting on Mary Magdalene at the tomb. It’s not your typical Advent reflection, I admit, but let me explain.
On December 21, we will experience the darkest day of the year, the winter solstice. It’s no accident that we celebrate Christmas just after this. As the Light of World comes onto the scene, the days get brighter — literally.
And yet, the Gospel of John makes it clear that Mary Magdalene came to the tomb on Easter Sunday while it was still dark. Darkness continues to exist when we are far from Jesus, as when the Earth is far from the Sun. It exists in our sin, our suffering and our confusion.
There is a fresco by 14th-century Italian painter Giotto translated into English as “Do Not Touch Me.” While studying Renaissance painting, my kids and I came across this fresco and were confused. Jesus is putting his hand up as if saying, “Stop,” while a woman is on the ground reaching out to him. We saw guards asleep in front of a rock, we saw the Easter banner, but we didn’t understand who the woman was that Jesus didn’t want to touch. After looking it up, we discovered it was Mary Magdalene who came to the tomb early in the morning while it was still dark.
It was a striking painting, but more remarkable still was that my daughter and I reflected on that scripture passage the day before in her Reconciliation preparation homework.
Mary Magdalene, the first at the tomb that morning, did not recognize Jesus until he said her name. But then Jesus told her not to cling to him: “Do not hold on to me because I have not yet ascended to the Father” (Jn 20:17).
I took the passage to prayer many times that week, even while looking at the painting. So, imagine my surprise when a few weeks later (and almost 100 years forward in history), I saw in a different book an even more beautiful fresco by Fra Angelico with the same title and from the same passage: “Noli Mi Tangere.” I was stunned that this passage kept coming up, and I asked Our Lord and Mary Magdalene to help me understand.
The mystery of the Incarnation, where God takes on flesh, is deeply intertwined with the mystery of God’s bodily resurrection. The stone of the manger becomes the rock of the tomb; the wood of the cradle foreshadows the wood of the Cross. He experienced all our humanity so we would never have to live it alone. God became one of us so he could become one with us.
When Mary met Jesus in the garden, it was still dark. Jesus had not yet ascended to the Father and sent his Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Completing these events allowed the indwelling of the Trinity inside each of us. This is significantly better than a Resurrection hug in the garden, although Mary had no way of knowing that.
Jesus asked Mary Magdalene to stop holding on to what was and trust him that something better was coming. I find he is asking me the same thing: “Do not hold on to the way you think I should work. Trust me.”
This Advent, in the darkness of the short winter days, I have been reaching out to God. The messiness of a sacramental marriage between two sinful people, raising five children with their own free wills, navigating friendships and ministry and the will of God in a broken world: I want him to come down and fix it all.
The plan doesn’t look like I want it to. Like Eve in the garden, I am tempted to try and control things. But like Mary in the new garden, Christ asks me to trust, to let him do his saving work even though it’s different than what I thought — just as the Messiah coming as a baby and growing up poor in Nazareth wasn’t what the Jews had expected. His plan confounds our plan, but do we trust he knows what he is up to?
At Christmas, we don’t just remember Jesus’ birth 2,000 years ago and we aren’t only reminded of his second coming. We recall that the Incarnation reveals the flesh of Jesus: God can now be seen, held, touched and communicated with. Because he continues to make himself present in the Eucharist, we can see Christ being born in us, taking on flesh in the bread of the Sacrament at every Mass.
This mystery of God dwelling inside us should change us profoundly because we can bring Christ’s light into the darkest corners of our hearts. God calls us by name, reveals the places we don’t trust him with and asks us to follow him.
At the end of the passage, Mary runs to tell the other disciples she has seen the Lord. She has seen his resurrected, incarnate body, and instead of holding on, she becomes an evangelist for what God has done. The joy of the Christmas message is that God loves us so much he wants to become one with us! He is the light in our darkness.
This Christmas, we can ask Mary Magdalene's intercession to stop holding on to the way we want things to be, to let God live in us and transform us into disciples with the joy of the mystery of the Incarnation: “I have seen the Lord!”
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