Tuesday of Holy Week

       What tools do we have to attain the level of sainthood that God has created us to be?  The clues are all there. The Word became _________. Jesus was fully ________, and fully Divine. The answers there are flesh and human.  Of course we also have a divine aspect as a creation of God too. That helps I am sure. But mostly, we are steeped in our humanity from the moment we take our first breath and perhaps let out a shrill wail at the transition from comfortable womb to life as we know it. Frightening, big change, a vulnerable, magnificent new life - a human. God went through this, God did so willingly and completely. There were no shortcuts.

       The scene today in this passage from John, indeed from this Holy Week, is one where Jesus has already died. In this passage he was crucified, buried and is now risen. Awesome for us to think about, the hope, the Resurrection! But the passage speaks to something much more human, much more intimate.

        John speaks of weeping. I don't think there is anyone that has escaped the excruciatingly human aspect of life, a loved one's death.  We can know in our head and heart that they are in a better place, embraced by God in loving arms. We might even be thankful that the person we love is no longer subject to the pain and torment of life. What we are left with though is a huge void, an unfillable gap in the humanity that we experienced and truly miss. That hole is what Mary was experiencing at the tomb. It is not the divinity we are thinking of in the weeping it is the crushing separation in the humanity. It is the relationship that is gone.

       I could list ad nauseam all the people who have died in my life. I am close to tears at the thought of people who graced my life, people that I loved and who loved me.  Parents, friends, sibling, mentors, people of faith.  While it is glorious to know they are alive in their heavenly inheritance, man, oh man, do I miss them so.  It is the human relationship and expression of love that I miss.

       Going back to the beginning, what  tools do we have to attain the level of sainthood that God has created to be? It s all in our humanity, relationships and how we love. In the end, it is the love that matters.

John 20:11-18

 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet.They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” ’ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.