Back to the Future

Gospel: John 20: 11-18

"She supposed it was the gardener..." - and in a sense she was correct! The entire drama of the death and resurrection of Jesus is designed to be a reenactment of the garden of Eden, an undoing of our fall from grace and a restoration to that original relationship between God and humanity.  Mary Magdalene represents the final act of that drama.

At the cross - the tree of life - stood a man and woman who see two streams flowing from the side of Jesus, the streams that flowed in Eden, and the tree of life that stood there as well.  As Adam and Eve had been entrusted to one another, so this man and this woman are entrusted to the care of one another as well.  Now, in the garden Mary Magdalene accepts the fruit of the tree - the salvation given by Jesus' resurrection, just as Eve had accepted the fruit from the serpent.  Mary goes to share this fruit of salvation with the others, just as Eve had shared the fruit with Adam.  

In participating in this Paschal mystery, we participate in this drama of salvation history.  We recall our state of sin and the memory of our fall, but we undo that fall by accepting the new fruit of the new tree of life, the resurrected body of the Lord Jesus.  This is what happens in every liturgy, the reliving of the entire drama of salvation history.  We go back to the future and are born anew.