Preaching of July 22, 2022
The figure of Mary Magdalene is particularly significant for our Order. Several provinces are placed under her patronage. Let us listen today to the way the Spirit can speak to us through this Word that we have just acclaimed.
Mary Magdalene followed Christ in his passion and she continues to live the same passion that Christ lived, a passion of pain but also a passion of love.
I suggest that we look at Mary Magdalene, the apostle of the apostles, as if we were looking in a mirror, and also as if we were looking at our contemporaries in a mirror.
She was seized by Christ. If each of us is here this morning, it is because each of us has been seized. This fact that led us to commit ourselves to follow Christ in Dominic’s family can be disturbed, can be blunted: Learn how God fills you with all his treasures, and the most precious one, to be able to love him, to be able to offer him gifts in return for his gifts, and how he takes away from you all that he has given you, so that it is not the gifts that you love, but the one who gives.
These times of trial that each of us encounters in our lives make us resemble Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb. We are familiar with this ‘black hole’ effect, for example, with screens where we can dissolve our time, our energy, our imagination (book: La Fabrique du Crétin Digital!). This fascination, that screens create, disconnects us from our lives, from others. Remember these photos where we see young people at table, together, but absorbed by their smartphones. If it’s not the screens, it’s a catastrophic vision of the world that thinks more easily of the end of the world… than of another world.
This black hole can also be the inability to look beyond the annoyances, the trials.
Remember the trees that hide the forest, just as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil prevented Adam and Eve from seeing the whole garden that was entrusted to them. With a word addressed to her, Mary Magdalene comes out of the tomb, out of the confinement of her pain.
My brothers, what word can we address to our contemporaries who are locked up in their misfortune, who cut themselves off from life? You know, like in the Walt Disney film, the snake Kaa who hypnotizes Mowgli: “Trust me, believe in me!
Jesus repeats his word of compassion to Mary Magdalene. A word of closeness, which invites her to return to her deepest desire. Who are you looking for?
How do we listen to our deepest desire, which is experienced in emptiness, in silence and solitude? How do we listen to the desire of our contemporaries? I’m not talking about the hubris, I’m talking about the vital power that we all carry.
How do we listen to this thirst, which is too easily quenched by the consumer society that only wants to place its products to keep its own system running?
Finally, Jesus calls Mary Magdalene by name. We know that it is this loving call that allows us to reveal the best of ourselves. That it is this love that makes us whole and calls us to live. To take the image that Pope Francis likes to use, this love that enables us to become originals and not photocopies. What kind of companionship do we engage in to help those to whom we are sent to respond to their own vocation?
Let us remember what was said about Dominic: he loved everyone and everyone loved him. Like Christ, he knew how to bring out the best in his sisters and brothers.
Jesus asks Mary Magdalene not to cling to him, but to bring this good news to the world: the love of Jesus that has given her back her dignity, that has opened a way for her; this love offered to hatred and domination, in the silence of her offering, has proved to be the strongest. Is this not the message that our brother Pierre Claverie wanted to bring to the Church in Algeria?
Sisters and brothers, let us recognise the hope that this Gospel carries. Let us revive this hope in the power of love!
After having brought the news of the resurrection of Jesus, tradition reports that Mary Magdalene went to retire to the grotto of the Sainte Baume where a sanctuary was built, a sanctuary that is animated today by our brothers in Toulouse.
My brothers, it is not yet time for reclusion! Today, Christ tells us: go and find my brothers!
Dear brothers, in the image of Dominic who sent his brothers to preach, are we ready to give up clinging to Jesus? Are we ready to set out to meet the men and women who remain hypnotized by their misfortunes and cannot look towards life?
Brothers and sisters, what word of compassion do we have to carry to bring them out of their confinement? How will we help our contemporaries to discover this new world that is already born?
Let us ask God, through Mary Magdalene, to know how to direct our desires towards life, to find the words and attitudes to show our contemporaries the blessings that God never stops giving.
