04/18/2026
[Jesus] asked her, ‘Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?’
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.’
Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’
She turned towards him and cried out in Aramaic, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means ‘Teacher’).
Jesus said, ‘Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”’
Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: ‘I have seen the Lord!’ And she told them that he had said these things to her. John 20:15–18 (NIVUK)
Ronald Rolheiser beautifully imagines this moment through Mary's eyes...
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.
Holy Spirit, thank you that I, like Mary, am not alone. You are God’s present to me, God’s presence with me. At the beginning of this day I pray: “Come Holy Spirit”.