Wednesday, April 17, 2019

Looking into the Eyes of Mary Magdalene

I have had the extraordinary privilege of seeing into the soul of Mary Magdalene as she approached the empty tomb on Easter morning. It happened in 1985 while I was serving as Assistant to the Rector (Mayo Little) of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Salisbury, North Carolina. I was newly ordained and willing to try things. So we had an outdoor animal blessing. I partnered with a young Roman Catholic priest. I was saying blessings and touching the critters. He was more experienced and reticent. Some of the dogs were quite aggressive. So he had a small pot of holy water and he used it instead of full contact. I naively touched every animal or whatever and then he gave it a shot of the holy water.

A lovely three year old little girl (Mary Magdalene) was in line. She and her family were members of St. Luke’s and we knew each other. She held in her small hands a paper cup. As she approached me, I looked into the cup. Down there at the bottom was a tiny dead hermit crab. She looked like her best friend had died, which may have literally been the case. She looked up at me with eyes filled with despair and tears, and said, “Can you do anything about this?”


I stammered a prayer containing a plausibility denial clause. “If you are in there, little crab, God bless you ... Now go see the other guy.” My colleague then took the wand and hit the back of the crab with a few drops of the holy water.

Well! All I can figure is that crab was all dried out. When the water hit its back, it revived. Its claws extended, and lifted up, as if to say, “Get me outta this cup!” The little girl looked down into the cup and saw the movement. Then she lifted her face to look at me. I stood transfixed as I looked deeply into her eyes. They were filled with joy and wonder. It was like nothing I had ever seen before or since. All I could imagine were the eyes of Mary Magdalene when she encountered the Resurrected Lord.

The moment of grace has never left me and no Easter ever comes without that vivid recollection. Nor can I ever help but conjure up that image when I hear the scripture read in which Mary, the First Apostle declares for the first time in history, “I have seen the Lord.”

I did not see the Lord that day. But I saw the eyes of the one who did, and that alone had the power to change my life.