By Fr. Stephen Page
Guest Column
Among the things I have saved in my moves to different parish assignments in our diocese is a map of parishes dating back to the episcopacy of the late Bishop Ralph Hayes (1944-1966). The map shows 99 parishes! Today we have 74 parishes and a dwindling number of priests. With ongoing conversations about parish collaboration and clustering, the story of Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the Risen Christ (John 20:17) came to mind.
Touching, clinging, grasping, hanging on to the Risen One, Mary Magdalene doesn’t want to let go. He tells her to “Stop holding on to me; for I have not yet ascended to the Father …” St. Jerome in his Latin Vulgate translation put it thus, “Noli me tangere.” That is, “Do not cling to me.”
Perhaps a modern-day rendition of the Risen Christ’s response would be, “Mary, it’s time for me to move on!” Perhaps one of the hardest things Jesus ever had to say to his Apostle to the Apostles! Or at least some might say the second hardest thing after telling Simon Peter, in another place, that he sounded like a “Satan” and to get behind him.
Letting go — of a person, a family, a home, a job, a parish, a friend — and moving on is one of the most challenging things confronting us in our rapidly changing world. Why is this so hard to do? Because we form deep bonds of friendship, community and security. Letting go is a form of dying and death. Death in leaving the familiar and comfortable. Death is final — if there is no resurrection.
In not turning away but facing our loss, letting go, even in human death, our Catholic faith gives us that theological and scriptural virtue of hope. As the Sacramentary says in the funeral preface, “The sadness of death gives way to the promise of immortality. Life is changed, not ended.”
Often, as Christians, we hold out — thinking that our faith is about resuscitation. Sacred Scripture and Tradition clearly teaches that resurrection is not resuscitation of the previously dead body of Jesus. He emptied himself of eternal glory and power to take on our fragile, human flesh. He was born, lived, suffered, died and raised into a new life existence. This existence awaits all believers, all peoples and all communities.
When it comes to living out this radical loss in the context of our faith, communities and buildings, it is hearing what the Lord Jesus said to Mary: “Do not cling.” It is stepping forward into life as Peter and the apostles did when the Apostle of the Apostles came to them with the news: “He is risen!” Now that is being a missionary disciple of Good News! She just had to let go, plain and simple.
(Father Stephen Page is pastor of St. Joseph Parish in DeWitt and Ss. Philip & James Parish in Grand Mound.)
