Go and Tell Them

Well, with this session, we reach the final stage of the Spiritual Exercises, which Ignatius calls Week Four and which is centered on the Resurrection of Jesus. So you've persevered this far. It's wonderful to see it, and we enter the last stage now of the Exercises. But before we approach that, as we've been doing, I want to just briefly mention Saint Ignatius' Rule 11. And this is what I would call the portrait of the mature person of discernment, where Ignatius pulls together everything that he has said thus far into a single picture.

And so the text reads: the mature person of discernment is neither carelessly high in consolation nor despairingly low in desolation, but humble in consolation and trusting in desolation. Now, we're not always either in the joy of consolation or the discouragement of desolation. There's also what Ignatius calls the tranquil time. That is, sometimes we may kind of look at our heart, as it were, and we would say, I don't feel like I'm in the joy of consolation, but neither do I feel like I'm in the discouragement of desolation. Things just seem to be kind of on an even keel in terms of where my heart is.

And this is a wonderful space, this tranquil time in which we can love and serve the Lord. But having said that, Ignatius now is looking at the times of spiritual consolation and spiritual desolation, and this is what we are attempting to grow into so that, let's say we go through a week or several weeks or days of spiritual consolation, the person doesn't become naively and carelessly high, as it were. You know, all the problems are over, everything is fine, it's all clear sailing from here. And on the other hand, when the person is in the heaviness of spiritual desolation, the person doesn't become despairingly low: it's over and nothing's going to change.

I have just done poorly in this spiritual life. I have to reduce my expectations. But on the contrary, in the joy of spiritual consolation, the person remains humble with that rich biblical space that we call humility. And on the other hand, in times of spiritual desolation, we don't become despairingly low, but confident and trusting that God's grace will see us well through this time. Humble in consolation, trusting in desolation.

And that is the, as I've called it, the portrait of the mature person of discernment toward which we are all striving to grow. So, as I mentioned, we enter the fourth week, the final stage of the Spiritual Exercises. Having walked with Christ through the struggle and suffering of His Passion and His Death, Ignatius now finally invites us to live with Christ, to share with Christ, to contemplate together with Him the joy and victory of His Resurrection, which is the final word of everything in the Christian life. And in so doing, to be strengthened and encouraged and filled with new hope as we live our daily lives with the newness that the prayer has brought. Now, our text for this particular time of prayer is the encounter of Jesus with Mary Magdalene, and we find this in John chapter 20. It actually begins in verse 1, but we'll read verses 11 through 18.

So again, we let our hearts be at peace. We let them simply be open and receptive and aware of the Lord. Again, we let our hearts receive the infinite love and warmth in the gaze of Jesus upon us. And we allow Him now to speak His word to our hearts. So Mary has gone down to the tomb early on Easter morning and has seen the stone removed from the entrance into the tomb.

She immediately runs to find Simon Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved, that is, John, and she tells them about this. Peter and John immediately run down to the tomb. Mary goes with them. They enter the tomb and leave, but Mary remains alone now at the entrance to the tomb. But Mary stayed outside the tomb, weeping.

Now her tears, if we can approach this with reverence, express something that you and I have all experienced. She can't leave the tomb because it's the last link to the one she so loves, but she is also afraid to look into the tomb. If you notice in the text, she hasn't done that yet because she is afraid that to see the emptiness of the tomb will mean the severing of the last link again to the one whom she loves. And so Mary does what you and I often do in such situations. She stands frozen.

The tense used in the Greek tells us that this goes on for some time. She stands frozen and her tears fall. Then all the details are given to us in the text: But Mary stayed outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb.

This wonderful woman of God has the courage to look into the emptiness, to look into the darkness, to face what she had feared, and finds out that the tomb is not as empty as she had feared and that a process begins that will lead to a whole new reunion with the Lord. 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?” That's a question we can let the Lord ask us, whether with physical tears that express that weeping or just the heaviness of heart. Why are you weeping?

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. And here again is another place for prayer. Her heart is filled with pain for the absence of the Lord whom she so loves, and the Lord is there with her.

But she doesn't yet recognize Him. And 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. So we are standing outside the tomb together with Mary early on this Easter morning.

We see her tears. She's frozen, feels helpless—a situation that our own hearts have often known. And we marvel at her courage. As she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb. She faces her pain, her fear.

She looks into the darkness of the tomb, and as I said, finds that it's not as empty as she feared. Why are you weeping? Yes. Why, why are you weeping? Why is your heart heavy as you live this day?

Live day by day. And then she sees the gardener, and we see the gardener, but we don't recognize yet that it's Jesus there already with her, even as her tears fall. And this is a rich moment to contemplate when we feel so alone, so helpless, so frozen, and all the time Jesus is there. Why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?

Maybe I just answer that question. I pause here in the prayer: Whom do you seek? And I tell the Lord of my search for Him. And then we witness this most personal of all the apparition appearances.

Jesus said to her, “Mary.” Just one word, but it's the word she most needs to hear said by that voice—her name—which tells her there is no distance between us. I am not lost to you. The personal relationship between us remains even beyond the death of Good Friday, and nothing will ever shatter it. And it is deeply and intimately personal, Mary.

And likewise, she responds with just one word, pronouncing His name as the Teacher, Rabuni. And in those two words, everything is said between these two hearts. And who can guess at the joy that begins to well up in this woman's heart as she knows that nothing now will ever separate her from her Lord? He is alive, He is with her, He calls her by name. And now the encounter becomes mission: Go and tell My brethren.

Go to my brethren and say to them that I go to my Father and your Father. And this will always be the case. The deep encounter with the Lord in prayer will always send us out in mission. And she does it. She goes to the disciples and she tells them, I have seen the Lord.

And again, can we just glimpse the joy, the delight, the energy with which she proclaims the Risen Lord? I have seen the Lord. Beautiful words. I speak now about them with Mary Magdalene, and I speak now with Jesus as my prayer slows. And I ask that this too, in faith, be the central reality of my life and the heart of my message to the world.

Perhaps if we feel so moved at this point, we might simply sit with Mary and just look upon her radiant face and the joy and the peace and the surety that we see there. The deep happiness which is ours too, of knowing that in the heart of the resurrected, risen Lord, we are infinitely loved and forever. What speaks to our hearts as we pray with this passage? Where is the Lord leading us? What does He ask us to bring to our lives?

And I'll close by reading just a few lines from the document, the apostolic letter that Saint John Paul II gave to the Church at the end of the Great Jubilee of the year 2000. This is always special to me because I was there at the Mass in Saint Peter's Square—the Mass of conclusion of the Jubilee Year—when he signed this document. And what I'll always remember is it was an overcast, rainy day throughout the Mass. But when the Mass ended and he went over to the table placed at the side of the altar to sign this document, the sun broke through the clouds and shone on him as he signed it. And he writes: this training in holiness that the new millennium calls for.

This training in holiness calls for a Christian life distinguished above all. So let's hear that: above all, distinguished in the art of prayer, which is what this whole series has been about and is about. But we well know that prayer cannot be taken for granted. We have to learn to pray.

And Ignatius is a master for us in this. We have to learn to pray, as it were, learning this art ever anew from the lips of the Divine Master Himself, like the first disciples who say to Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Yes, dear brothers and sisters, our Christian communities—think of our parishes, our homes, what the Church calls the domestic church of the family and the home—our Christian communities must become genuine schools of prayer, where the meeting with Christ is expressed not just in imploring help (which is certainly a part of prayer: ask and you will receive), but prayer can expand to be so much more. Not just in imploring help, but also in thanksgiving, praise, adoration, contemplation, listening, and ardent devotion, until the heart truly, as he says, falls in love.

Mother Teresa, in a phrase often quoted, said everything starts from prayer, and it's true. And may God grant us that blessing every day. Amen.