“Do not hold me” is the request that Jesus of Nazareth makes to Mary Magdalene, which we can read at the end of the Gospel according to John. It is one of the most captivating and mysterious moments in the entire Bible. Two days after Jesus’ crucifixion, the news of the empty tomb spreads as much among his followers as among his executioners. The death of the Galilean preacher has been extremely cruel. The cross was a Roman torture device meant for enemies of the Empire and a curse for a Jew, to die exposed like a wild beast. The account of Jesus’ Passion is of extreme violence exercised from the most ingrained masculinity. The betrayal of Jesus, the reaction of the followers with the sword, the trial, the mockery and torture, gambling for the tunic with dice... all of it paints a ruthless world in which women are silent witnesses.
Very different from what happens with the frightening silence of the empty tomb. It cannot be by chance that it is a woman, a being who was nobody, the only one who encounters the resurrected Jesus, he who a few days before had died vexed and abandoned by all. Later, the Gospels speak of appearances of Jesus to his followers, almost phantasmagorical manifestations of a Christ who passes through walls and disappears before everyone’s eyes. Only Mary Magdalene sees the newly resurrected Jesus, when he can still be held in the world.
That is why Jesus must ask her not to hold him. Not because that woman could take and keep Jesus, but because she had to understand that the human Jesus who had been glorified cannot remain among humans any longer. It was necessary to understand, in short, that God’s proximity can be the worst obstacle to faith. God needs to mark the distance with his creatures, otherwise the temptation to manipulate and domesticate him is too strong. It is no coincidence that the Our Father, the main Christian prayer, begins by acknowledging that the Father is not everywhere, but in heaven.
Next, Mary Magdalene receives the commission to explain to Jesus' followers what she had seen. A very significant detail that reminds us that the Church is born female. This commission also highlights the difference between Mary's trusting faith and the disciples' need to see, touch, and understand. Those same men who had abandoned their master now cannot conceive of becoming followers of an absence, of understanding that they must be present in the void that he has left. The subsequent accounts of the apparitions, with instructions to Peter and the rest of the apostles, are nothing but a reflection of their powerlessness to understand the profound simplicity of the fact of the resurrection, of how death can give meaning to existence, which is thus projected towards eternity. Mary Magdalene had understood it, and Paul of Tarsus would systematize it later, acknowledging the foolishness and scandal that it represents for the world to believe in a crucified person.
This Easter account reminds us that the history of Christianity could be written from the tension between those who want to make God present, through rules, rituals, or images, and those who know that we cannot retain him, that only distance prevents distortion and superficiality of faith. This is why Mary Magdalene's attitude towards the absent God continues to be a lesson for all believers.
