~Written around 5am on Easter, April 5, 2026~
I woke up before it was light outside and imagined Mary and the other women on their way to the tomb and arriving to see the stone rolled away. It was still not light out, and I can imagine the distress they had at being unable to locate Jesus’ body. And then, I imagine that the sun rises enough to fully light the area, and Mary sees what she thinks is a gardener, and he asks, “Why are you weeping?” I imagine that she is thinking, how can you not know about Jesus and the fact that his body is not here, but she says something like, “Sir, if you’ve moved him, take me to the place where you laid him.” She just wants to get to his body, his physical form, to say her final farewell, but just then, she hears, “Mary,” and in that moment, the veil is lifted, and she sees the person she supposed was the gardener for who he truly is, Jesus. Did he really audibly say Mary, or did she hear it intuitively in her spirit? We do not know, but what we have written in John says that he told her not to hold on to him. Though it feels like an admonishment, I really think of this as saying let go of how you knew me, my physical form, let go of the attachment to that shell. This was because if she was so attached to his shell, it would not allow him to do what and be who he needed to be. He needed to ascend to the father, and he couldn’t do that if he were still perceived as a corporate shell.
But Mary is the first to witness him being alive in John. In other gospels, it’s her and other women, which I find telling. If not for them, would Jesus have appeared to others? It was only after Mary had stated what she saw that the others even began having their own visitations. It wasn’t the men who appeared, witnessed, and believed first; it was the women, the women who followed and financially and emotionally supported Jesus. It was these women who believed through their perception.
The lesson or question for us all is what are we not perceiving because we are only seeing with our physical eyes, hearing through our physical ears, and touching with our physical hands. What are we missing because we are not tapping into that sacred place within where truth is laid bare?
In the Gospel of Mary, Mary details how she was able to perceive Jesus as risen through a recounting of a dialogue she had with Jesus where she asked him how she was able to do so. Jesus replied that she perceived him through the nous, a word that has come to mean the spiritual eye of the heart. It is not our mind, it is not through our logical senses, it’s through the place and space inside of us that hold the truth of our being, the essence of our Self that is able to perceive what we cannot see with our physical eyes or hear with our physical ears or touch with our physical hands. It’s the part of us that knows when a loved one has passed is near to us without being able to see, hear or touch them physically. We are, instead, perceiving them, and in that perception, we see, hear, and touch them through the spiritual eye of the heart.
Death in Aramaic means existing elsewhere, and though many share this as a caution for us to be present and not exist elsewhere while we are here on the physical plane, I see it as a positive feature for those who are existing elsewhere on the spiritual plane. It allows us to know, like Mary, that those who have left the physical plane have risen on the spiritual plane just like Jesus and are existing there rather than here. But just as Mary could perceive Jesus because he told her to let his mortal body go, we can perceive our loved ones through connecting to them in their current state rather than their former one.
The Easter story gives us hope, not so much in the idea that Jesus saved us, because I don’t think that was the goal, contrary to popular Christian theological belief. I believe he did this to show us that death was not an end, but simply a new beginning, and for that, I’m forever grateful.