DESIRE TO SEE JESUS IS THE ROOT OF PRAYER


FEAST OF ST. MARY MAGDALENE

Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP 

Song 3:1-4; Ps 63:2-6,8-9; Jn 20:1-2, 11-18

Woman, why are you weeping?

As we celebrate the feast day of St. Mary Magdelene, we reflect on what prayer means, given the new birth we have received at our profession of faith in Jesus Christ. Prayer is seeking the face of Jesus Christ our Lord. Various analogies illustrate the relation between Jesus Christ and a converted soul. That of a newborn baby seeking or crying for milk from its mother brings out the need a Christian soul has for Jesus Christ to remain alive and grow spiritually. St. Paul used this analogy in his letters to various Christian communities he founded. The analogy of espousal is also very common in the New Testament and the writings of St. Paul. This analogy is the basis for including the romantic Song of Songs among the canonical collections composing the Holy Scripture. The Church employs a passage from this romantic composition to celebrate the feast of Mary Magdalene. The Gospels presented Mary Magdalene as a woman with an infamous past; her encounter with Jesus Christ changed her completely. Her conversion was so sincere that her past is forgotten. She got a brand-new spiritual life. This is because she focussed on Jesus Christ with all her strength and gave him all she had.

The passage of the gospel gives us an idea of the attachment she had to Jesus Christ. Her conversion to Jesus Christ was so true that her whole life revolved around Jesus Christ. She became one of the constant followers of our Lord in his itinerant preachings. This gives the background and explains why she could not wait for the full dawn to hurry to the tomb of our Lord. “It was very early on the first day of the week and still dark, when Mary of Magdala came to the tomb. She saw that the stone had been moved away from the tomb and came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved.” She witnessed the death of the Lord, but the love she bore Jesus could not let him go; she still sought after him as if he were still alive. This love, which death could not diminish, gave her the singular privilege of being the first to see the risen Lord. “‘Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and remove him.’ Jesus said, ‘Mary!’ She knew him then and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbuni!’—which means Master.”  Mary’s experience of the risen Lord makes us understand that one who loves and seeks Jesus Christ, truly finds a new and heavenly life. The confession of faith in Jesus Christ confers a new life; the evidence of that life is a prayerful desire for the Lord.

Our faith and love for Jesus Christ is the principle of a new and immortal life. Mary’s love for the Lord merited her encounter with the risen Lord, the principle of her new life. This persistent love for the Lord is what the passage from the Songs presents to us. “This bride says this: On my bed, at night, I sought him whom my heart loves. I sought but did not find him. So I will rise and go through the City; in the streets and in the squares I will seek him whom my heart loves.” The persistent and restless love for the Lord is the sign of a heavenly life intricately connected to the Lord as a bride to her Groom or as a child to its mother for life and nourishment. Without this hunger and thirst for Jesus Christ who is our bread from heaven, there is no way to ascertain the presence of heavenly life in a soul. A healthy Christian soul seeks the Lord in everything and sees his countenance. The spirit he has planted in us seeks him and is restless until it rests in him. The hunger that his Spirit puts in us is never left unsatisfied, and that he will come to us is as certain as the dawn. “Scarcely had I passed them when I found him whom my heart loves.”

Let us pray: O God, whose Only Begotten son entrusted Mary Magdalene before all others with announcing the great joy of the Resurrection, grant, we pray, that through her intercession and example we may proclaim the living Christ and come to see him reigning in your glory.    

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