© 2021 Sophie Malicot
© 2021 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
When suddenly the gaze is opened, the eyes of the soul see and the ears of the soul hear.
What courage in balance is necessary to go beyond social norms, the discursive reasons of the mind and personal upheavals? A breakthrough beyond the established world, to enter a new world, like the arrival of the newborn in a universe sensed without being perceived.
Mary Magdalene’s heart is pierced with pain. The death of the Master has haunted her mind since last Friday. How can she explain so much suffering? How can she accept an unjust condemnation? She wants to make a final gesture of love - derisory - in meager recovery from an outrage that she cannot accept. So she prepares the ointments, the linen bandages and at dawn this Monday morning, sets off to finish the embalming. Four friends accompany her.
She advances with a firm step, in ignorance of the political directives of guarding the tomb. The women remain cloistered during the Sabbath; she has seen no one and cannot access this information. So when these Roman soldiers almost knock her down at the gate of Damascus, running in panic towards the city as if they had seen a ghost, she stops for a few minutes, overcome by this great nervous tension which reigns in her since all these events. But nothing changes her determination and she promptly resumes her journey.
It is the fourth day; the body must begin to feel… The stone in front of the entrance is large; who will help roll it away? In the tumult of incessant thoughts, time passes quickly and already, here she is at the tomb. In front, the stone is rolled aside, the entrance is cleared…
What inner force pushes Mary Magdalene to venture into the tomb? To overcome shock, to get used to the darkness? To brave the fear of death? Pushed beyond her fears, beyond her amazement, she enters and sees the empty space in place of the body, the folded towel of Her head, the bandages on the stone and further away, at the foot of the niche, the shroud… From the depths of the abyss, Mary Magdalene lets out a cry of alarm and anguish.
Can time be evaluated in circumstances outside of time? How many moments did Mary Magdalene remain inside to regain her senses—horrified—enough to go back outside? Outside; she can no longer find her friends. Terror invades her and when she finally sees them, she is unable to speak; she can only cry out: “He is no longer there—he has been taken away!” Mary Magdalene does not flee as the soldiers did before; her love for the Master is too tenacious. She wants to know where he is, wants to see again what her mind cannot conceive: she goes back inside and drags her friends with her.
What other time had passed to come out, to sit on this same heavy stone rolled at the entrance, to discuss; where was the body transported? Why did the bandages remain here, intact? Reason is lost, the mental moorings are cast off.
Dawn is already here; time accelerates and freezes simultaneously. Everything passes so quickly since leaving home at dawn! And yet each second counts as an eternity. What is this attraction of the gaze to the side, this incongruous presence? Who is this silent and motionless stranger? Mary Magdalene rushes; perhaps he knows something! Is he the gardener or does she only consider him as if he is?
Mary Magdalene is beyond; beyond the codified norms, pushes the audacity to speak to him. “Where have you taken the Master? Where have they laid him? Tell us so that we can go and get him.” The first direct link with the morontial world is this speech where the conventional reserve imposed on Jewish women approaching a stranger is broken; Nalda the Samaritan did the same at Jacob’s well. She speaks and he does not answer. The Presence is insufficient to human eyes. Then Mary Magdalene begins to cry; of despair, of sadness, of incomprehension, of all these feelings that overwhelm her and make no sense. What meaning will the Mystery reveal? Compassion is mistress with the Master. Faced with this disarray, he speaks. First words, addressed to women; it will take a long journey for Peter to accept this state of affairs. But they do not yet recognize him and Jesus takes another path - intimate - to open the eyes of the soul: “Mary.” Familiar voice, Mary Magdalene immediately recognizes herself and immediately recognizes the one she was looking for: “My Lord and my Master!”, and kneels at his feet.
In the momentum, Mary Magdalene wants to kiss his feet. Giotto (1226 - 1337) magnificently represented the two worlds in his icon “Noli me tangere”. She, kneeling, unbalanced towards him, stretches out her two arms, one hand towards His hand, her eyes absorbed in His eyes, the material world magnetized towards the morontial world. He, his foot turned in the opposite direction, leaves but turns his face towards her, stretches out his hand, looks at her. They are both the sacred Movement, the material world stretched towards the morontial world, the morontial world directed towards the spiritual world. Everything is transition, passage, without breakage, in dynamics.
E† Love.
“Don’t touch me, Mary…” Touch is the first sense in place in the infant, probably in utero. In this new world, it is erased, removing with it the human dichotomies: Jew and gentile, rich and poor, free man and slave, man and woman. In its place another sense opens, with which this post-mortem world is seen and heard and believed.
It took time to recover from the shock to rush back to the city and tell the apostles what had happened to them. Once again, like an invisible relay, only the intimate word - Peter - (it will be the same for James) convinces him to go to the tomb. He must see for himself but in front of the empty tomb, he will only have his rational thoughts, ineffective for deepening the Mystery. How can we believe these excited women?
Mary Magdalene is dejected, desperate in the face of male disbelief. Who can she turn to? The fullness of her devotion can only believe and she returns to the sepulchre, the only place of consolation. Then alone present, the Master speaks to her again: “Do not remain in doubt; have the courage to believe what you have seen and heard…”. And again, back in town, the apostles refuse her testimony.
Those who have ears hear; those who have eyes see. Jesus spoke to a woman to introduce humanity to His living Presence. He did not point out any superiority; women and men are equal. Mary Magdalene’s journey is different; it passes through fears, fears, terrors, despair and devotion, all this myriad of human experiences until the upheaval of the being. She then lets go of her bearings and opens her senses in another direction: “Have the courage to believe what you have seen and heard”. Likewise, “the great challenge to modern man consists of establishing better communications with the divine Monitor who inhabits the human mind… Imprecise domains of the embryonic consciousness of the soul to reach the border region of the consciousness of the spirit”.
What meaning do we put in Jesus’ choice to reveal his resurrection to women as the first witnesses, and more particularly to Mary Magdalene? It is impossible to put forward chance in the face of a Master of the universe, especially since the soldiers were present beforehand and could have been witnesses too, before the women. Does the Sacred Encounter pass through an inner opening, more endowed with feminine qualities of being, capable of another perception of Reality, beyond the force, of reason which often restrain and restrict the advances of the soul, beyond also the hegemony of science which, for these present times, refutes any other knowledge - direct knowledge - than its own? The answer is individual and probably lies in the observation of what happens within oneself when “the human end of the channel connecting God to man” opens.
To believe or not to believe comes next; then the interweaving of exchanges.
The resurrection is in the spring. In the nest, the chick has grown. It is time for it to take flight. So the father bird stands in front of it and attracts it, attracts it…
— Have the courage…
Sophie MALICOT
Many terms in this story have been borrowed from the following fascicles: UB 189:4 // UB 189:5 // UB 190:0 // UB 190:2.5 // UB 193:3.1 // UB 196:3.34 // UB 142:2.4