him whom my heart loves

 

“I sought him whom my heart loves…. I will seek him whom my heart loves…. I found him whom my heart loves.” To love and to be loved is a longing and fulfilment. Love burns like fire. It extends the person, and let the love of the other enter the innermost depth.

Mary Magdalene is seen as a person filled with love for Christ.  Her experience of healing had led her to walk with Jesus very closely. She too stood by the cross with mother Mary. Her eager longing for Jesus brought her even to the tomb of Jesus very early in the morning. It was lifeless body placed in the tomb. But her love would not allow that body to take the burden and pain of lifelessness in the tomb. Because she herself had known tomb of pain and darkness.

Her healing from ‘seven devils,’ shows the freedom she entered through the love of Jesus. She experienced comfort and consolation in the love of Jesus in all the tormentation she had been suffering. True love touches our innermost being, our history, our pain, burdens, and all that shape us.   

When Jesus called, ‘Mary!’ the call once again uplifted the life and healing that Mary Magdalene had once experienced. So, the person of Mary can be seen as a person who received love, life, healing, and consolation. Her attitude was not of a bond of attachment, but a communion in love, much more than a friendship or a following.

That love made her worthy of being an apostle to the apostles. Her love made her a prophet, for she came to understand the truth of the resurrection and proclaimed, “I have seen the Lord.”

It is the same love that Jesus asks of us, in our life, devotions, prayers, offerings and all that we do. It is in the communion of love we can find our freedom and healing. It is there we are transformed into apostles. In the communion of love, we are called to respond in justice where the weak are persecuted. Only with the communion of love we can be prophets who see the truth in compassion and mercy.

Unfortunately, perhaps, this is what we desire the least. If love is absent, we don’t look for Jesus. Instead, our systems, mission, proclamation and devotions become spaces of symbols and terminologies of arrogant dogmatism, activism, and militancy, like iron rod, sword, weapons etc. Mary Magdalene invites us to reexamine our own Christless tombs and seek consolation of Christ’s love, and at the same time to stand at the tomb of Jesus to hear him calling us by our name.