Holy Week having begun, many readers of the Egg (if only there were many such readers!) may be busy with printing bulletins, recruiting acolytes, arguing with cantors, and otherwise preparing for the Paschal Solemnity in ways other than prayer and study. If so, there is some danger that such hypothetical readers might enter the pulpit come Sunday a tad unprepared.
Never fear. Pope St. Gregory the Great has your back.
In his Homily 25, which is (mostly) concerned with St. John's account of the Resurrection, Gregory comments on some detail upon the Lord's appearance to Mary Magdalene. It is all worth reading, including the fascinating and grotesque interpretation of Job 41:1. In one lovely and much less grotesque passage, Gregory says:
"Mary Magdalene came and made known to [Jesus'] disciples, 'I have seen the Lord, and he said these things to me.'" See, how the sin of the human race was removed where it began. In paradise a woman was the cause of death for a man (Gen. 3:6); coming from the sepulchre a woman proclaimed life to men. Mary related the words of the one who restored her to life; Eve had related the words of the serpent who brought death. It is as if the Lord was telling the human race, not by words but by actions, "Receive the draught of life from the hand of the one who offered you the drink of death."
The Christ-as-new-Adam typology is well known, as is its counterpart in Mary-Eve typology -- but of course the Mary in that usage is normally the BVM (surely, you recall the palindromic Ave/Eva from so many Annunciation paintings). We cannot remember seeing this blog's patroness recruited to make the same point.
The typology is rife with problems, not least the danger of a misogynistic reading. Still, Gregory's image of the Apostle to the Apostles as the one who delivers the "draught of life" to her comrades is a powerful one, and raises Mary Magdalene to a stature more often afforded the Lord's mother. (It is almost as if Gregory is apologizing for his great mistake, of officially identifying his subject as a prostitute).
A preacher might also find use for the pairing of Eden and the Empty Tomb as loci for life and death.
As a bonus, a very tired preacher looking for inspiration on Quasimodo Geniti, these days called Easter 2, might borrow from the stirring conclusion to the same homily:
Let us find evils distasteful, even if we have experienced them. Almighty God freely forgets that we have been guilty; he is ready to count our repentance as innocence. If we have become dirtied after the water of salvation, let us be born again from our tears. Accordingly, we must listen to the voice of our first pastor: Like newborn children, desire milk ((1 Peter 2:2). Return, little children, to the bosom of your mother, the the eternal Wisdom. Drink from the bountiful breasts of the lovingkindness of God. Weep for your past misdeeds; shun those that avoid what lies ahead. Our Redeemer will solace our fleeting sorrows with eternal joy -- he who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.
These references to God's breasts, while they may seem a little mischievous to contemporary congregations, were common enough in the Middle Ages, as Carolyn Walker Bynum has shown, and continued to be so at least into John Donne's time. Easter may not be the best time to marshal defensive citations in proud array, but remember that they exist.
