22 April 2025 – Tuesday in the Octave of Easter
Homily
Mary Magdalene, the one who had anointed Jesus' feet and kissed them tenderly, the one of whom Jesus said that wherever the Gospel was proclaimed, what she had done would be told in memory of her - this same Mary was the first to come to the tomb on the morning of the third day. We saw, in the Gospel passage read at Easter Day Mass, how she found the tomb empty and how she ran to inform Simon Peter and John. She was therefore the first among Jesus' disciples to announce the Resurrection.
In the passage from the Gospel of John that we have just read, which follows on from the one read on Easter Day, we find her by the tomb, weeping because her Jesus had been taken from her. It was then that Jesus appeared to her. She was therefore the very first person to whom Jesus appeared after his Resurrection. He makes himself known to her by simply calling her by her name. ‘Mary’, as he had no doubt done many times during their meetings in Bethany, in Martha's house. She responds to him with the same note of intimacy: ‘Rabboni’; which does not simply mean ‘Master’, but rather ‘My master’. And once again he sends her to his disciples, whom he no longer simply calls his disciples or his friends, but his brothers and sisters. And the choice of the word ‘brothers’ is important, because the message is no longer that he will meet them again in Galilee. The message is that he is ascending to ‘his Father’ and ‘their Father’.
The experience of the Resurrection will radically change the disciples. Throughout the Easter season, the first reading at each day's mass will convey to us the experience of the first Christian community. Yesterday's reading, and today's reading, which is a continuation of it, relate to us Peter's speech to the crowd on the day of Pentecost. This Peter, fearful for his own life, who had denied Jesus on the day of his arrest, now speaks to the crowd with courage and boldness: ‘This Jesus whom you put to death,’ he tells them, ‘the Father has raised.’ The whole of Christian preaching is summarised in these words. All the rest will simply consist of drawing practical conclusions from this fundamental fact.
The Easter liturgy will allow us to see how this was experienced by the first Christians.
Armand Veilleux