Ostium Catholic

I sought him whom my soul loves. I sought him but I did not find him. The Canticle does not soften the seeking or the not-finding. The beloved is absent and the lover goes looking - through the streets, through the city, past the watchmen, until she finds him and will not let him go. The seeking is not casual. It is the action of someone for whom the absence is intolerable.

Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb before dawn. She has been at the cross and at the burial. Now she comes in the dark to where the body should be and it is not there. She does not have an explanation. She does not have a theology of resurrection yet. She has an absence she cannot accept, and she stays at the tomb after the disciples have gone home. Two angels and a gardener, and she cannot see what she is looking at, because she is looking for someone who should be dead.

Then her name. One word, in a voice she recognizes, and she knows. Not through argument or evidence or the appearance of wounds - through her name said by the right voice. She turns and says Rabbouni. Teacher. The whole Gospel turns on this scene: the one who sought and did not find, and then found because she was found.

The feast of Mary Magdalene is a gift to anyone in the season of not-finding. The seeking that continues in the dark, past the watchmen, toward a tomb - this is not the absence of faith. In the Canticle it is the form love takes when the beloved is not present. Mary Magdalene is the apostle to the apostles because she stayed long enough to be found by the one she was looking for.

Where are you in the dark before dawn, seeking something that seems absent? Do not leave yet. The question is not whether you have found but whether you are still at the tomb. Stay. Say the name you are looking for. Wait for your name to be said back.

Lord, I have sought you and not found you - or so it has seemed. Let me be Mary at the tomb: staying when the others have gone home, looking even when I am looking at the wrong thing, present enough to hear my name when you say it. Precious Blood of Jesus, save us. Amen.