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Holy Saturday
While the Gloria is being sung in the churches...
One of the things most leading me to reflect on my Jesus’ doctrine of mercy is the episode to be read in the Gospel of St. John: “Mary, weeping, remained outside near the tomb... She suddenly turned around and saw Jesus standing upright... And Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ ” Still not content over having loved sinners so greatly, to the point of giving his life for them, Jesus reserves his first manifestation after the Passion to a converted sinner.
It is not certain that Jesus had already presented Himself to his Mother. Our hearts lead us to believe so, but none of the four Evangelists says so. Indisputable, however, is this appearance to Mary Magdalene. He appears for the first time and manifests Himself in his second role as the eternal God-Man to her, who personifies the boundless host of those redeemed by Christ’s love. First he was the Man in whom a God was hidden. Before that, in the times of expectation, the Word was only God. Now He is the God-Man taking our mortal flesh into the heavens. And this divine masterwork, by which the flesh born of woman becomes immortal and eternal, is revealed to a creature who was a sinner... Not only this, but to her, precisely to her, He entrusts the message for His apostles themselves: “Go to my brothers and tell them that I am ascending to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.” To Mary the sinner, even before the Father!
What a river of trust pours into me on considering this! How it should be told, retold, continually told to poor souls, wavering and ashamed because they know they have sinned, that Jesus loves them so much as to place them before the Father and his Mother. For I think that if He had not yet risen to the Father, in that first hour of resurrection He had not shown Himself to his Mother either. At root it is a necessity of loving justice. Jesus came for sinners. Therefore, the first fruits of his resurrection should go to her who is at the head of the family of redeemed sinners.
“To my brothers - to my Father and yours - my God and yours” These words ring out like as many joyous bells in my heart. Brothers are the disciples, and brothers and sisters are we who descend from them. If some doubt still remains in us, it now falls like the stone at the tomb, shaken by this whirlwind of love, and trust arises in the hearts most imprisoned and oppressed by the memory of their errors and by reflection on the immense distance separating us, who are dust, from God. Jesus so states: we are brothers; we have a single Father and a single God with Christ.
Oh! He grips us with his pierced hands - it is the first gesture He makes after his death - and hurls us upon the heart of God, in the heavens, no longer closed, but opened by love, so that the sweet tears of new reconciliation with our Father may be shed there.
Alleluia! Glory be to You, Master and God, who save us with your pain and give us Love as the way of salvation!