Who Not What

In my life I’ve asked God, what do you have for me?  What do you want from me?  What is your purpose for my pain?  What is your plan for my life?  What am I to do?  But perhaps I’ve been asking the wrong questions.  It’s not and never has been in the What but in the Who.  Consider these few verses from John 20.

11 Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12 and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

13 They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” 14 At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

15 He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”…16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

17 Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

When Mary went to the tomb and it was empty, she was asked, WHO do you seek? Who not what?Then later in this same story, when the WHO is revealed, Mary rushes to embrace Him.  But he asks her to wait until His glory is fully revealed.

I too rush for the familiar.  Mary knew who Jesus was in her life.  She had lived in His world, watched Him interact with people, saw His love easily given, heard the teaching, watched the miracles.  And at an empty tomb, when she saw Him again, she could only understand what she had previously known.  She longed for the past, wishing life could return to what it once was—because in those days, she felt truly alive, filled with hope and joy. 

But a different day had come, and it was a day she could not yet grasp or understand.  She longed for the memories of their shared life. I live backwards so often, longing for what I once knew, for what I once loved, for laughter of old days and times.  All the what.  

It is clearly the Who we seek.  For the Who is the hope, the future of new days, of healing, of glory.

MARY MAGDALA’S EASTER PRAYER by Ron Rolheiser* APRIL 1, 1985

I never suspected

            Resurrection

                        and to be so painful

                        to leave me weeping

With Joy

            to have met you, alive and smiling, outside an empty tomb

With Regret

            not because I’ve lost you

            but because I’ve lost you in how I had you –

                        in understandable, touchable, kissable, clingable flesh

                        not as fully Lord, but as graspably human.

I want to cling, despite your protest

            cling to your body

            cling to your, and my, clingable humanity

            cling to what we had, our past.

But I know that…if I cling

            you cannot ascend and

            I will be left clinging to your former self

            …unable to receive your present spirit.

* Ronald Rolheiser, OMI, is a prominent Roman Catholic priest, theologian, and award-winning author known for his work on contemporary spirituality