Mary Magdalene in the tomb

Saint John - Chapter 20

And she saw two angels in white. J-J Tissot

[11] Maria autem stabat ad monumentum foris, plorans. Dum ergo fleret, inclinavit se, et prospexit in monumentum :
But Mary stood at the sepulchre without, weeping. Now as she was weeping, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre,

[12] et vidit duos angelos in albis sedentes, unum ad caput, et unum ad pedes, ubi positum fuerat corpus Jesu.
And she saw two angels in white, sitting, one at the head, and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been laid.

[13] Dicunt ei illi : Mulier, quid ploras? Dicit eis : Quia tulerunt Dominum meum : et nescio ubi posuerunt eum.
They say to her: Woman, why weepest thou? She saith to them: Because they have taken away my Lord; and I know not where they have laid him.

From The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by J-J Tissot (1897)

It is somewhat difficult to follow the order of events, for the Evangelists, each giving his own impressions, appear to contradict each other.  With a little care, however, we can, with the aid of the various details given, form a very accurate picture of what took place.  This is our own idea: Mary Magdalene, followed by the other two Marys, is the first to arrive, and she finds the actual tomb empty, for the angels are in the antechamber.  She takes no notice of them, but whilst the other Holy Women are questioning them, she rushes away to the Guest-Chamber to tell the Apostles that the body of the Lord has disappeared.  She makes no allusion to the angels; they are quite secondary considerations with her; and, as she did not hear them announce the Resurrection, she can only say "They have taken away the lord." Certain authors, we must add, prefer to explain these words as an expression of the distress of Mary Magdalene and her companions.  They have all heard together what the angel said, they have all reported the facts to the apostles, as stated by saint John, but everything seems to them so extraordinary, and their ideas are so confused, that they speak sometimes in the words of the angels and sometimes in their own, thus explaining the divergence in the accounts of the Evangelists.

However this may be, there is no doubt that the Apostles hastened to the tomb, as related above, and when they returned, meeting the Holy Women by the way, they took them back with them with the exception of Mary Magdalene, who went alone to the tomb, still not knowing what to think and feel ensure of but one thing: that the Saviour has disappeared.  There she is, then, alone in the Garden weeping, and in the midst of her tears she approaches the tomb to look into it once more.  She now sees two angels seated where the body of the Saviour had lain, one at the head, the other at the feet.  She feels no emotion at this sight; what she seeks is more to her than any angels, everything else gives way to her anxiety, and she addresses the heavenly messengers as she would any ordinary mortals.  One of them says to her: "Woman, why weepest thou?" And she returns with strange persistence to her original thought: "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him."

This despair of Mary Magdalene has from the earliest days of the Church inspired many touching commentaries.  Saint Bernard drew tears from the eyes of his audience by dwelling on those simple words: "They have taken away my Lord", whilst Saint Bernardine of Sienna eloquently expresses his surprise at the apparent indifference of Jesus to the tears of the woman He loved: "Oh Mary", he says, " in what hope, in what thought, sustained with what courage didst thou thus remain alone near the tomb?  He Whom thiu seekest seems insensible to thy grief; he seems to see thy tears, but to care naught for them.  What is the meaning of this change?  Why does He, Whose own eyes were wet with tears when He saw thee weeping at the tomb of Lazarus, turn from thee now?"

Totus tuus ego sum 

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam