First Reading · Song of Songs
Searching the streets
Where we are
The Song of Songs is a cycle of love poems with no plot, no theology, and no mention of Theos. It got into the canon because Israel read it as the love of Yahweh and his people, and the Church read it the same way; Bernard of Clairvaux preached eighty-six sermons on the first two chapters alone. This little passage is one of two night-search poems in the book.
What happens
"On my bed at night I sought him whom my heart loves — I sought him but I did not find him. I will rise then and go about the city; in the streets and crossings I will seek him whom my heart loves. I sought him but I did not find him. The watchmen came upon me as they made their rounds of the city: Have you seen him whom my heart loves? I had hardly left them when I found him whom my heart loves."
What to notice
The beloved is never named, and the phrase that replaces his name occurs four times in four verses. She-ahavah nafshi — the one my nefesh loves. Nefesh is not the soul of later philosophy; it is the throat, the appetite, the life. The one my throat loves. Nothing else in the passage is repeated like this: it is the only handle she has for him, and she uses it every time she opens her mouth.
The failure is stated twice, flatly. Biqqashtiv ve-lo metsativ — I sought him and I did not find him. Once in bed, once in the streets. The poem gives more lines to not finding than to finding, and the sequence is worth watching: she looks where he ought to be, fails, gets up, and goes out into a city at night.
And the people she meets are the wrong ones. Metsauni ha-shomrim — the watchmen found me. The verb is the same one she has been failing to perform: she is the one doing the searching, and she is the one who gets found. She asks them her question and — the passage does not say they answered. Ki-m'at she-avarti mehem ad she-matsati — scarcely had I gone past them when I found him. The help was useless and the finding happened immediately after she left it behind.
And the lectionary stops one clause early, which is the most interesting editorial decision of the day. The citation is Song 3:1-4b, ending at I found him whom my heart loves. The very next words in the Hebrew are achaztiv ve-lo arpennu — I seized him and would not let him go. That clause has been cut, and anyone who knows what the Gospel is going to say will see why. The Church put this poem on Mary Magdalene's feast and removed the line about holding on.
Responsorial Psalm
A soul that clings
Where we are
Psalm 63 carries the superscription when he was in the wilderness of Judah — a prayer set in dry country, which is why its central image is thirst. The early Church made it the psalm of Sunday morning prayer; Chrysostom says it was decreed that no day should pass without it.
The selected verses
Psalm 63:2. "O Theos, you are my Theos whom I seek; for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water."
Psalm 63:3-4. "Thus have I gazed toward you in the sanctuary to see your power and your glory, for your kindness is a greater good than life; my lips shall glorify you."
Psalm 63:5-6. "Thus will I bless you while I live; lifting up my hands, I will call upon your name. As with the riches of a banquet shall my soul be satisfied, and with exultant lips my mouth shall praise you."
Psalm 63:8-9. "You are my help, and in the shadow of your wings I shout for joy. My soul clings fast to you; your right hand upholds me."
What to notice
The first verb sets the hour. Elohim eli attah, ashacharekka — O Theos, you are my God; I seek you at dawn. It is the same one-off verb built from shachar, the dawn, that Isaiah 26 used for the night vigil — to look for someone the way you look for first light. On a feast whose Gospel begins early, while it was still dark, the lectionary could not have picked better.
The thirst is bodily and it is doubled. Tsam'ah lekha nafshi, kamah lekha besari — my throat thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you — and then the comparison, be-erets tsiyyah ve-ayef beli-mayim, in a dry and weary land without water. Nefesh and basar: the two Hebrew words for the whole living person from the inside and the outside. Nothing here is metaphorical in the way we usually mean.
Then the line that has caused more argument than any other in the psalm: ki tov chasdekha me-chayyim — your loyalty is better than life. Not better than a good life; better than being alive. It is a valuation, made by somebody in a desert, and it is the reason the psalm can end where it does.
And the last verse gives the day its keyword. Davqah nafshi achareikha — my throat clings after you. Davaq is the verb of Genesis 2:24: a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife. It is the word for glue, for skin sticking to bone, for a tongue stuck to a palate. The psalm's final posture is a grip that will not be prised off — which is exactly the posture the Gospel is about to interrupt.
Gospel · John
He said her name
Where we are
The Fourth Gospel's resurrection chapter opens with this. Peter and the beloved disciple run to the tomb, look in, and go home; John gives them nine verses. Then the camera returns to the woman who was there before them and did not leave.
What happens
"On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed." She runs to Peter: "They have taken the master from the tomb, and we don't know where they put him." Later she stands outside the tomb weeping, bends in, and sees two angels in white, one at the head and one at the feet where the body of Jesus had been. They ask why she is weeping. She says, "They have taken my master, and I don't know where they laid him." She turns and sees Jesus and does not know it is him. "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" Thinking he is the gardener: "Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him, and I will take him." Jesus says, "Mary!" She turns and says "Rabbouni." He says: "Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them, 'I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" And she goes and announces: "I have seen the master."
What to notice
John dates the scene with a clause about light. Prōi skotias eti ousēs — early, darkness still being. In a Gospel that opened with light shining in darkness and has spent nineteen chapters on the theme, this is not a weather report. She arrives before the light does, which is the same thing the psalm's dawn-verb describes.
Her one sentence changes twice. To Peter: they have taken the master. To the angels: they have taken my master. To the man she takes for a gardener: tell me where you laid him, and I will take him away. The possessive appears at the tomb, and by the third telling the noun has dropped out altogether — she is talking to a stranger about him, exactly as the Song's woman does. And note the plural in the first version: we do not know where they put him. She was not alone at the tomb, though John gives us only her.
The angels are seated in a specific arrangement, and it is furniture. Hena pros tē kephalē kai hena pros tois posin, hopou ekeito to sōma — one at the head and one at the feet, where the body had lain. Exodus 25 describes the kapporet, the cover of the ark: two cherubim of hammered gold, one at each end, facing each other across the space between, and there I will meet with you. John has arranged the empty slab as the mercy seat, with the two figures at the ends and nothing in the middle — and the place where Theos promised to speak is now unoccupied and reported empty by a woman in tears.
She mistakes him for the gardener, and kēpouros occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. John has already told us the tomb was in a garden. She is wrong about the man and right about the location, and the mistake has been rewarded by readers since Origen: the first human being was put in a garden to work it and keep it, and this one is standing in a garden at first light on the first day of a week.
She turns twice, which is either a narrative slip or the point. In verse 14 estraphē eis ta opisō — she turned round and saw him. And then in verse 16, after he says her name, strapheisa ekeinē — turning, she said. She was already facing him. Whatever the first turn accomplished, the second one is what the Gospels elsewhere call conversion, and it is triggered by a sound rather than a sight.
Because the recognition is entirely auditory, and it takes one word. She has looked directly at him and seen a gardener; he says Mariam — her name, in her own language — and she knows. John 10 supplied the rule ten chapters earlier: he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out... the sheep follow him because they know his voice. Every element of that sentence is being demonstrated here. She answers Rabbouni, which John bothers to translate, because it is Aramaic and because it is what she actually said.
And then the sentence the day turns on. Mē mou haptou is a present imperative with the negative, and Greek grammar makes it a command to stop an action already in progress: not do not touch me but stop clinging to me, let go. She is already holding on. The reason given is temporal — for I have not yet ascended — and the alternative offered is an errand: poreuou de pros tous adelphous mou, go to my brothers. It is the first time in this Gospel the disciples are called that.
The message she is given to carry is precisely worded and does not quite say what we expect. Anabainō pros ton patera mou kai patera hymōn, kai theon mou kai theon hymōn — to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. Not our Father. The relation is extended to them without being flattened into an identity.
And her report uses the formula that will matter in five verses' time: eōraka ton kyrion — I have seen the master. That is the exact sentence the disciples will say to Thomas, who will refuse to accept it secondhand and get his own appearance a week later. The sentence he would not take on trust was hers first. Thomas Aquinas called her apostola apostolorum, the apostle to the apostles; in 2016 the Church raised this day from a memorial to a feast on that ground.