Easter Monday, 2012

The following is a poem from Ronald Rolheiser* about Mary Magdala meeting Jesus in the garden on Easter Morning (see John's account).

Blessings of Resurrection this Easter Season.

Joel

Mary Magdala's Easter Prayer

I never suspected
   Resurrection
       and to be so painful
to leave me weeping
With joy
       to have met you, alive and smiling, outside an empty
   tomb
With regret
not because I've lost you
but because I've lost you in how I had you -
   in understandable, touchable, kissable, clingable
       flesh
       not as fully Lord, but as graspably human.

I want to cling, despite your protest
   cling to your body
cling to your, and my, clingable humanity
cling to what we had, our past.

But I know that ... if I cling
you cannot ascend and
I will be left clinging to your former self
... unable to receive your present spirit.

___
* Ronald Rolheiser, "Mary Magdala's Easter Prayer," in Forgotten Among the Lilies, p. 176 - appearing also in The Holy Longing, p. 166.