This Sunday – the Third Sunday of Easter – gives us an excellent opportunity to consider the richness of ancient Christian tradition as it has flowed and coursed down to us over two thousand years in the East and West.
First, it should be said that in the most ancient Western rite, this Sunday was “Good Shepherd” Sunday – which was moved to the following week in the modern era.
In the present Ordinary Form lectionary, this Sunday doesn’t get a consistent Gospel every year, but rather varied accounts of post-Resurrection appearances. This year, as you should know, because you’ve been to Mass or are on your way – the Gospel is the narrative of the Road to Emmaus.
The locality of Emmaus has not been identified with certainty. There are various hypotheses and this one is not without an evocativeness of its own for it allows us to think that Emmaus actually represents every place: the road that leads there is the road every Christian, every person, takes. The Risen Jesus makes himself our travelling companion as we go on our way, to rekindle the warmth of faith and hope in our hearts and to break the bread of eternal life. In the disciples’ conversation with the unknown wayfarer the words the evangelist Luke puts in the mouth of one of them are striking: “We had hoped…” (Lk 24: 21). This verb in the past tense tells all: we believed, we followed, we hoped…, but now everything is over. Even Jesus of Nazareth, who had shown himself in his words and actions to be a powerful prophet, has failed, and we are left disappointed. This drama of the disciples of Emmaus appears like a reflection of the situation of many Christians of our time: it seems that the hope of faith has failed. Faith itself enters a crisis because of negative experiences that make us feel abandoned and betrayed even by the Lord. But this road to Emmaus on which we walk can become the way of a purification and maturation of our belief in God. Also today we can enter into dialogue with Jesus, listening to his Word. Today too he breaks bread for us and gives himself as our Bread. And so the meeting with the Risen Christ that is possible even today gives us a deeper and more authentic faith tempered, so to speak, by the fire of the Paschal Event; a faith that is robust because it is nourished not by human ideas but by the Word of God and by his Real Presence in the Eucharist.
In the East, this Sunday is, and has from ancient times, celebrated as the Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearing Women.
Both East and West, then, emphasize encounter. Encounters with the Risen Lord. Encounters which are surprising and mysterious. We are still on the road. What keeps us from recognizing him as he draws near? We still draw near to the tomb. What do we bring along? What do we bear?
An excerpt from my book, De-Coding Mary Magdalene. You can download a pdf of the book here.
‘Myrrh-bearer’
To put it most simply, the Eastern view of Mary Magdalene, although marked by some unique legendary material, in general cleaves much more closely to what the Gospels tell us about her. The East never adopted St. Gregory the Great’s conflation of the Marys, and their commemoration of Mary Magdalene on her feast day has always been centered on her role as witness to the empty tomb and her declaration, “He is risen!”
The title with which Mary is honored in Eastern Christianity, while unwieldy to English speakers, makes this association clear. She is called “Myrrh-bearer” (she is also known as “Equal-to-the- Apostles,” or Isapostole, and by the term mentioned earlier, “Apostle to the Apostles”). As a myrrh-bearer, she is also honored in Orthodoxy on the second Sunday after Easter (Pascha), the “Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women,” along with seven other women who are mentioned by the Gospel writers as having an important role at the cross or at the tomb:
“You did command the myrrh-bearers to rejoice, O Christ! By your resurrection, you did stop the lamentation of Eve,
O God!
You did command your apostles to preach:The Savior is risen!”
(Kontakion, Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women)
Two weeks before, on Pascha itself, it is traditional to sing a hymn in honor of Mary Magdalene, one written, intriguingly, by a woman.
Kassia, the composer of this hymn, was born in Constantino- ple in the ninth century. She married and had children, but even tually established and led a monastery in that city. She is believed to have composed more than fifty hymns, thirty of which are still in use in the Orthodox liturgy today. She also wrote secular poetry, and she was the author of a number of pithy epigrams (“Love everyone, but don’t trust all” is one of many).
Her troparion, or short praise-hymn, puts us in the heart of Mary Magdalene as she approaches the tomb:
“Sensing your divinity, Lord, a woman of many sins
takes it upon herself
to become a myrrh-bearer and in deep mourning
brings before you fragrant oil
in anticipation of your burial; crying: “Woe to me! What night falls on me, what dark and moonless madness
of wild desire, this lust for sin.
Take my spring of tears
you who draw water from the clouds, bend to me, to the sighing of my heart, you who bend the heavens
in your secret incarnation,
I will wash your immaculate feet with kisses and wipe them dry with the locks of my hair; those very feet whose sound Eve heard
at the dusk in Paradise and hid herself in terror.
Who shall count the multitude of my sins or the depth of your judgment,
Savior of my soul?
Do not ignore your handmaiden, you whose mercy is endless.”
Douay Rheims Mark 16:12 reads: ” And after that he appeared in another shape to two of them walking, as they were going into the country.” And that comes from the Vulgate which uses “in alia effigie”…in another image etc. Three times humans talk with the Risen Christ and don’t recognize Him at first.
Aquinas may have provided a clue…we will in the risen world receive our body back glorified but also at its peak age. What if Christ’s peak age was not 33 as at His death but 37 or 26? That would explain how they could not recognize Him at first but do recognize Him after time. Also Isaiah 53:2 says of Christ….” there is no beauty in him nor comliness and we have seen him and there is no sightliness that we might be desirous of him.” Christ did not come looking like Robert Redford or George Clooney because he wanted no followers who would follow him on that basis…don’t laugh…John F. Kennedy probably got many votes on looks and the image of New England looks/ money…effigie…to use the Latin. What if along with getting our risen body back at its peak…we also have the numerical perfection of our facial features nuanced a bit so that everyone looks better than they did in the fallen state but soon recognizable by those who knew them. Painters can tell you that if they paint an ocean wave with foam on it…they keep tweeking it…correcting it….til it’s number…it’s ratios are nearer perfection than two days ago.
So at Emmaus to the two men in Luke and to Mary Magdalene who thought him the gardener in John as she talked to him, Christ looked both a different age and better in terms of facial beauty after rising. That is one possible answer to the disguised but not disguised Risen Lord.