A reading of the holy gospel according to John. Mary stood weeping beside the tomb. Even as she wept, she stooped to look inside, and there she saw two angels in dazzling robes. One was seated at the head and the other at the foot of the place where Jesus' body had lain. Woman, they asked her, why are you weeping?
Mary answered them, because the lord has been taken away, and I don't know where they have put him. She had no sooner said this than she turned around and caught sight of Jesus standing there, but she did not recognize him. Woman, he asked her, why are you weeping? Who is it you are looking for? Mary supposed that it was the gardener's, so she said, sir, if you are the one who carried him off, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.
Then Jesus said to her, Mary. She turned to him and said in Hebrew, Rabboni, meaning teacher. Jesus then said, do not cling to me for I have not yet ascended to the father. Rather, go to my brothers and tell them, I am ascending to my father and to your father, disciples. I have seen the Lord, she announced.
And then she reported everything that he had said to her. And this is the gospel of the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. This episode from our the accounts of our blessed lord's resurrection has many items in it which are certainly puzzling.
And there's so much that you can see in it or read into it that you hardly know where to begin. That is where you have your feet solidly on the ground and not just spin out fictions. There's one thing perfectly clear, that when Mary came to the tomb, she found it empty. And then she says they have taken away the lord, or words to that effect. That notice that pronoun without antecedents.
Who were the they? Now this is not an a literal interpretation. But when I read that and read it over several times to try to find some idea, idea, this is what came into my mind. When we're in trouble, often enough, we do try to find the lord in our trouble. And sometimes, we find an empty grave.
He's not there. Just yesterday, I heard of a very sad situation of a child being very severely hurt, and the father just couldn't take it. And, you know, he expostulates, blames, and blasphemes god. He could not find god in the tragedy that had struck his daughter. He found an empty tomb.
Now this is a fact of life, and let's not put it try to sweep it under the carpet. We don't always, when we go to seek Christ, find him. At least we do not recognize him. Now we come to this very to one aspect of this episode this morning that offers that puzzles me. Because what happened?
See, when Mary first sees our lord, she doesn't recognize him. She thinks he's the gardener. So, obviously, she's seeing something. She's seeing a man that she thinks is a gardener. And she doesn't recognize him until he pronounces her name, and she recognizes him in her name.
Now they are the facts that we are given so far. What do you make of that? I without any exaggeration, I see I see here precisely what happens very often in in the in this most often in sad affairs, in tragic affairs of life when we have, I say, gotten clobbered. Now I use that word I know it's kind of slang, but the thing is I mean that. It isn't at times, some people, they seem to just get whacked from every direction.
And they go to the tomb to find Jesus, and they find it empty. They don't recognize Jesus until they hear their name. Now that may come from very unexpected sources. Where do you find Jesus? Mary went to the tomb.
He wasn't there. She was going in the wrong place. She didn't go back to the apostles. He wasn't among them. She didn't go to the high lords of society, to the priests, the scribes, the pharisees.
She didn't go to any of them. She didn't go to the people. She didn't go to the crowd. She didn't go to the mob. She went to the tomb where the body had been and found it empty.
The Lord was not in the tomb. So she thinks that the body has been removed. The body was removed, that's for sure. And notice, the recognition of Jesus comes from a source that she had no reason to expect it. It's a complete and astonishing phenomenon that she finds Jesus speaking her name in the person she thought was the gardener.
And so it is often enough, not always, but often enough in our lives that the Lord speaks to us and speaks our name when we're seeking him, but it doesn't come from where we expected it. And so the point I would like to make is this, we have to be alert. We haven't we mustn't have a closed mind of where Christ is. Now I never will forget the the day at Catholic U when knew the word came that Kennedy had been been assassinated. It was a very spectacular, phenomenon.
You're all most of you are acquainted with the campus of Catholic U, and if you've seen the campus of Catholic U, and if you've been in fairly good shape, you certainly have seen the shrine. It's sort of you can't miss it very easily. So there this huge building stands. And when the news came, as you know, sometime after lunch, we were at lunch, the students, without any preparation, without anybody saying anything, nothing was done. They converged right on the shrine because that's where they thought they would find Jesus.
Now there's nothing wrong in going to the church. Our blessed lord is in the Eucharist in a very special way. And our belief in the Eucharist, as I tried to point out Thursday night, is absolutely unique. We believe that Christ is present in the Eucharist. By that I mean that he is the Eucharist, not merely in, not merely with, not merely abiding with or abiding in.
That it's far from being a metaphor. That is the literal truth that what was bread and what was wine is now the body and blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. This is what the the reformers rejected, but this is what we believe. And so when people say, look, I know that god is everywhere. So do I know that?
So they say, why go to a special place? The one of the very simple reasons is that there are certain places where we have greater expectation of finding god in the sense of being aware of his presence. This isn't this is a commonplace, fact. And so for a Catholic who believes in the Eucharist, in the real presence, where will they find it more than when they go and appeal and bend the knee before the Eucharistic lore our Eucharistic Lord? Sometimes they won't get an answer.
It'll be cold. There'll be no response. They have gone as far as the reaction. They've gone to the tomb and found it empty. And they they may find Christ.
They may find our lord in the voice of a little child saying hello Or in an old person walking down the street, they may see and hear Jesus. These things happen. And so as we read this episode, which is there are there are a lot of puzzles in it, at least for me. This does appeal to me. Mary went to the tomb because there is where she thought Jesus was.
Well, he wasn't. And so let us keep an open mind that when we when we make an effort because we need to find Jesus, let us not be so cocksure that we are know where we will find him for sure. It may be very possible that he will speak to us from the gardener. In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.