Homily for Wednesday of the 16th Week in Ordinary Time Cycle II
Theme: THE EMPTY TOMB…….” Mary of Magdala went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord”
BY: Fr. Antoni CAROL i Hostench
HOMILY: Today, we celebrate with joy Saint Mary Magdalene. With joy and benefit for our faith!, because her trail could very well be ours. Magdalene came from afar (cf. Luke 7: 36-50) and she did go very far… Indeed, at the dawn of the Resurrection, Mary looked for Jesus, found the risen Jesus and met Jesus’ Father, “Our Father”. That morning, Jesus Christ discovered her the most important fact of our faith: that she was also God’s daughter.
In Mary of Magdala’s itinerary, we discover some important aspects of our faith. In the first place, we admire her courage. Though a gift from God, faith requires courage from the believer. Generally, we tend towards what we can see, what can be seized with our hand. God being essentially invisible, faith “represents the risky enterprise of accepting what plainly cannot be seen as the truly real and fundamental. It involves a leap out of the tangible world” (Benedict XVI). Mary, by seeing the risen Christ can also “see” the Father, the Lord.
On the other hand, the “leap to faith” «is reached through what the Bible calls conversion or repentance: only he who changes receives it “(Benedict XVI). Was not this Mary’s first step? Should not this also be a reiterated step in our lives?
In the conversion of Magdalene, there was much love: she did not spare any perfumes for her Love. Love!: here is another “vehicle” of faith, because we neither hear, nor see or believe whom we do not love. In John’s Gospel it clearly appears «believing is to listen and, at the same time, to see (…)». In that dawn, María Magdalena takes risks for her Love, she listens to her Love (to hear Him saying “Mary” is enough for her to recognize Him) and she meets the Father. «On the morning of Easter (…), María Magdalena, is asked to contemplate Him as He ascends to the Father, and finally to her full confession “I have seen the Lord” (Jn 20:18)» (Pope Francis).
Fr. Antoni CAROL i Hostench
(Sant Cugat del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain)