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.
