The gospel for this feast of St. Mary Magdalene, John 20: 1-2, 11-18, offers us a glimpse into the very hinge of human history.
The hinge of human history?Really?Is this a case of hyperbole, a dramatic flair of overstatement?
I think not.Notice Mary over the course of the first part of this gospel.She is absorbed by death, the death of Jesus.Mary’s orientation given by the horizon of death leaves her cast down, consumed by sorrow and an anxious need to control the circumstances surrounding the burial of Jesus.She grasps and grabs for something tangible and certain.She cannot see straight or rightly through the horizon of death.
Suddenly, and this is the hinge of human history, Jesus risen from the dead breaks in upon her.As the ascending one reveals himself to her, the horizon is transformed.The horizon of death has been smashed to bits on the rising Son.
Since the first mysterious moments of humanity’s beginnings, in those moments marked by what we have come to call original sin, the original break with God, with life, human beings’ horizon has been that of death.Death has provided the last word, the final note, the dreadful conclusion to everything beautiful and not so beautiful.
Now, however, since the resurrection of the Son, the horizon is altogether different, transformed from death to life.Death is not the end, but a passing through.The symphony that is each human life has its final note in a sound that beautifully sings forth into eternity.
Concretely, this changes everything.No matter the darkness, doubt, desperation, defeat, failure of the moment, none of that is the horizon but only a stage on the journey toward the real horizon, the horizon of the rising Son.What is ultimate now is life.The present darkness and death as final is shattered.What stands in the end as real is eternal life.
No matter the place we stand at the moment and the time of day it might be in our life, let us set our eyes on the horizon and see the rising Son.