Easter Morning: Mary of Magdala’s Experience

Posted on April 9, 2023 by Brian H. Gill
Diego Delso's photo: Easter eggs in front of the Zagreb cathedral, Croatia. (April 13, 2014)
Pisanica: Easter eggs, Croatian style. Big ones.
( Photo by Diego Delso. (2014) delso.photo, License CC-BY-SA, used w/o permission.)

William D. Edwards et al.'s Figure 2: 'Scourging. Left, Short whip (flagrum) with lead balls and sheep bones tied into leather thongs. Center left, Naked victim tied to flogging post. Deep stripelike lacerations were usually associated with considerable blood loss. Center right, View from above, showing position of lictors. Right, Inferomedial direction of wounds.' From 'On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ'. JAMA (March 21, 1986) used w/o permission.Recapping Friday’s post: whether Jesus died from cardiac rupture, cardiorespiratory failure or something else, the main point is that he died.

Then Jesus was buried.

Again, let’s remember that he was, in the words of the Munckin coroner in “Wizard of Oz”, sincerely dead:

“…As Coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her.
“And she’s not only merely dead, she’s really most sincerely dead….”
(“…The Witch Is Dead!“, “Wizard of Oz” (1939) via LyricsFreak)

All that happened Friday. I gather that the following Saturday was comparatively quiet.

Then, Sunday morning, women who had been traveling with Jesus went to the tomb.

They brought along materials needed for a proper burial. Our Lord’s Friday interment had been a rush job.

“When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go and anoint him.”
(Mark 16:1)

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all describe the same event. But each looks at it from a different angle. And that’s another topic.

“I Have Seen the Lord”

James Tissot's 'Mary Magdalene Questions the Angels in the Tomb.' (between 1886 and 1894)This morning’s readings include John 20:1–9. I’ll pick up a couple verses later.

“But Mary stayed outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb
“and saw two angels in white sitting there, one at the head and one at the feet where the body of Jesus had been.
“And they said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken my Lord, and I don’t know where they laid him.’
“When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there, but did not know it was Jesus.
“Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?’ She thought it was the gardener and said to him, ‘Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him, and I will take him.’
“Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni,’ which means Teacher.
“Jesus said to her, ‘Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them, “I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”‘
“Mary of Magdala went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord,’ and what he told her.”
(John 20:11–18)

Convincing Peter and the other Apostles that Jesus had stopped being dead took 40 days and at least one working lunch.

But they finally realized what had happened. Then they started sharing the best news humanity’s ever had, with anyone who would listen.

Two millennia later, it’s still part of our job. And what Jesus did is still the best news ever:

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About Brian H. Gill

I was born in 1951. I'm a husband, father and grandfather. One of the kids graduated from college in December, 2008, and is helping her husband run businesses and raise my granddaughter; another is a cartoonist and artist; #3 daughter is a writer; my son is developing a digital game with #3 and #1 daughters. I'm also a writer and artist.
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5 Responses to Easter Morning: Mary of Magdala’s Experience

  1. The Overlord Bear says:
    April 14, 2023 at 05:08

    Another 40 days and at least one working lunch for the Apostles to believe in His Resurrection, huh? I imagine they’d laugh along at being called “Most Loyal Christians and Catholics” like how memers these days use that mocking description template.

    Reply
    • Brian H. Gill says:
      April 15, 2023 at 15:16

      Oi. Yeah, we’ve got the usual lot of Scribes and Pharisees – different details, same old attitudes – today. And yes, likely enough they would laugh. It’s not, if memory serves, recorded in Sacred Scriptures: but the Apostles were very human, and laughter/humor is part of our standard equipment.

      Reply
      • The Overlord Bear says:
        April 23, 2023 at 12:00

        Now I’m reminded of that series called The Chosen, which fascinates me with its takes on how the featured Biblical figures lived their daily lives and were intertwined with each other while doing its best to stay true to the Spirit within the Scriptures. My favorite aunt, who lives in Texas with her family, first recommended it to me, but I never got the motivation to check it out for myself until I saw my mom watching it while we were on the road to my grandparents’ house. But further on the topic of humorous religion now: Tom Gould’s Tomics! Wonderful pieces of religious humor, those works!

        Reply

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