20250722 THE BEGINNING OF FAITH IS LOVE
22 July 2025, Tuesday, Mary Magdalene
First reading |
Song of Songs 3:1-4 |
I found him whom my heart loves
The bride says this:
On my bed, at night, I sought him
whom my heart loves.
I sought but did not find him.
So I will rise and go through the City;
in the streets and in the squares
I will seek him whom my heart loves.
I sought but did not find him.
The watchmen came upon me
on their rounds in the City:
‘Have you seen him whom my heart loves?’
Scarcely had I passed them
when I found him whom my heart loves.
Responsorial Psalm |
Psalm 62(63):2-6,8-9 |
For you my soul is thirsting, O Lord my God.
O God, you are my God, for you I long;
for you my soul is thirsting.
My body pines for you
like a dry, weary land without water.
For you my soul is thirsting, O Lord my God.
So I gaze on you in the sanctuary
to see your strength and your glory.
For your love is better than life,
my lips will speak your praise.
For you my soul is thirsting, O Lord my God.
So I will bless you all my life,
in your name I will lift up my hands.
My soul shall be filled as with a banquet,
my mouth shall praise you with joy.
For you my soul is thirsting, O Lord my God.
For you have been my help;
in the shadow of your wings I rejoice.
My soul clings to you;
your right hand holds me fast.
For you my soul is thirsting, O Lord my God.
Gospel Acclamation |
Alleluia, alleluia!
Tell us, Mary: say
what thou didst see upon the way.
– The tomb the Living did enclose;
I saw Christ’s glory as he rose!
Alleluia!
Gospel |
John 20:1-2,11-18 |
'Mary, go and find the brothers and tell them'
It was very early on the first day of the week and still dark, when Mary of Magdala came to the tomb. She saw that the stone had been moved away from the tomb and came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved. ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb’ she said ‘and we don’t know where they have put him.’
Meanwhile Mary stayed outside near the tomb, weeping. Then, still weeping, she stooped to look inside, and saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head, the other at the feet. They said, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ ‘They have taken my Lord away’ she replied ‘and I don’t know where they have put him.’ As she said this she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, though she did not recognise him. Jesus said, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said, ‘Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and remove him.’ Jesus said, ‘Mary!’ She knew him then and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbuni!’ – which means Master. Jesus said to her, ‘Do not cling to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go and find the brothers, and tell them: I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ So Mary of Magdala went and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord and that he had said these things to her.
THE BEGINNING OF FAITH IS LOVE
SCRIPTURE READINGS: [SONG 3:1-4 OR 2 COR 5:14-17; PS 63: 2.3-4,5-6,8-9; JN 20: 1-2, 11-18]
Pope Emeritus Benedict, in his first encyclical, gave us the foundation of Christian Faith, which is faith in God’s love in Christ. He wrote, “‘God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him’ (1 Jn 4:16). These words from the First Letter of John express with remarkable clarity the heart of the Christian faith: the Christian image of God and the resulting image of mankind and its destiny. In the same verse, Saint John also offers a kind of summary of the Christian life: ‘We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.’ We have come to believe in God’s love: in these words the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. Saint John’s Gospel describes that event in these words: ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should … have eternal life’ (3:16)” (Deus Est Caritas, 1).
Indeed, falling in love with Jesus is the beginning of faith. Whether a Christian is passionate about his or her faith is dependent on his or her passion for the Lord. If one lacks passion for Christ and the Gospel, it is obvious that he or she has not yet come to believe in God’s love for him or her. They may apparently be doing Church work, but not because they are motivated by God’s love, but because that is the way to feel secure, respected, and loved. Some are motivated by fear of punishment and guilt. Others do God’s work out of routine and to make themselves useful. This is particularly true of Church leaders, workers, the clergy, and religious who have been serving so long in the Church that they have become jaded and lost their passion and enthusiasm.
Yet, in today’s feast of Mary Magdalene, we see someone who is so deeply in love with the Lord. In the gospel, we read that she was the first woman to go to the tomb to look for the body of Jesus. She was in tears when she found that His body was missing. We can imagine her loss, caused not just by the death of her master, but also by the fact that even the body was missing! Hence, she was inconsolable, sitting in the garden, weeping. She could not forget how the Lord delivered her from the seven demons. She was eternally grateful for the great love the Lord had for her and how He gave her back her dignity.
As a consequence, she was made an apostle to the apostles. Jesus entrusted to her the mission of telling the apostles that He had risen. Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, because I have not yet ascended to my Father. But go and find the brothers, and tell them: I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Jesus could entrust this responsibility to her only because He knew her love for Him was unshakeable. Only a person who loves can testify with conviction, passion, and fearlessly. Jesus knew that many would use their reason and would be sceptical of His resurrection. They lacked the faith of Mary Magdalene because they lacked love for the Lord. Only a person who loves the Lord and has a deep faith in Him can inspire others to faith.
This was so in the life of St. Paul in the second reading. He wrote, “The love of Christ overwhelms us when we reflect that if one man has died for all, then all men should be dead; and the reason he died for all was so that living men should live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised to life for them.” St. Paul was converted because he experienced the merciful love of Christ for him on his way to Damascus. In spite of the fact that in ignorance, he was persecuting the Christians, the Lord revealed Himself to Paul, forgave him his sins, and made him an apostle to the Gentiles. (cf 1 Tim 1:12-17)
Indeed, when we look at the growth of the Church and the lives of the saints and martyrs, they were all motivated by their love for Christ. In the life of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, she showed great faith in her suffering simply because she suffered in love. She realized that her vocation was to love, and love was the heart of the Church, the Gospel. “My Lord, I love you” sums up her whole vocation and the key to her spirituality and her understanding of the Gospel. She came to realize through reading the Gospel that it basically revealed to us the mercy of God, His love for us, and the invitation to love Him in faith. When we read the Gospel with the eyes of love, we gain a deeper understanding than a theologian who merely studies the Scripture using academic and scientific tools. For this reason, she was named a Doctor of the Church by Pope John Paul II because she was an expert in the science of love.
This is also true in the lives of our faithful. The ordinary faithful might not be well-grounded in theology and Scriptures, nor are they able to explain all the complexities of the Church’s doctrines, but they have a deep love for the Lord. The people who are most likely to die for Jesus and for the faith are the ordinary faithful who have encountered God’s love and love Him deeply. Theologians, clergymen, and religious may have more academic knowledge about the Scripture and the doctrines of the Church, but they do not necessarily have more faith than the ordinary layperson. This is because they often use their head, not their heart, whereas laypersons who are moved by the Lord experience Him through the sacraments, sacramentals, and popular devotions – such as Divine Mercy, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Marian devotion – which appeal to the sentiments of the heart. These individuals are more likely to surrender their life to the Lord in love and faith.
The truth remains that Christianity is not an ideology. Even our humanitarian work is not based on an ideology like Marxism or liberation theology. It is a commitment to a person, not even to the Gospel as a book. No one dies for an ideology. There are so many forms of thinking. We can change ideologies once we are convinced. But commitment to a person requires not just the head but the heart. Thus, when the Church speaks of the Gospel, it is always in the singular, not in the plural, unless it is referring to the four books of the Gospels. To speak of the Gospel is to speak of Christ, because He is the Gospel, the Good News in person. Jesus is the Word of God. If we read the Gospel or the Bible, it is in order that we might come to know the person, the heart and mind of Jesus – not simply for more information or knowledge of the Bible. Only when we are committed to Jesus as a person would we be willing to die for Him because we love Him. For the sake of love, as St. Paul said, we would be willing to give up our life for our beloved.
Today, as we celebrate the feast of Mary Magdalene, we too must learn from her: to cultivate a heart relationship with the Lord. Are we willing to open our heart to Him and not just think about Him? St. Teresa of Avila taught us that in prayer, we should feel more and think less. Thinking alone cannot lead us to experience His personal love for us. Feelings draw two persons together because they beat with one heart. For the sake of love, we will die for our beloved. That is why love consumes our entire being, as it did for Mary Magdalene. When a man and a woman fall in love with each other, they want to possess the other person and be possessed entirely. That is why when a woman falls in love with a man, she becomes protective, possessive, jealous, and resentful of those who attempt to take her beloved away from her. William Congreve wrote, “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”
But how can we fall in love with Jesus? We must be like Mary Magdalene: persevere in love. We need to yearn for the Lord as much as she yearned for Him. She did not give up hope when she could not find His body. We are told that the rest of the apostles came and saw that the body was not there. They left and did not see the Risen Lord; they did not persevere. Their love was not strong enough, so they gave up easily. But Mary stayed behind, still yearning for the Lord. Because of her perseverance in seeking His presence, the Lord appeared to her. We, too, if we want to encounter the Lord’s love, must persevere in prayer and intimacy, never giving up hope. We just need to just spend time with the Lord in silence and contemplation, beginning with the Word of God, and very soon, the Lord will appear to us in our hearts and fill us with His love.
Yet, we must not reduce faith simply to an emotional relationship. This can be disastrous, not just to the person but in our relationships with others. We can become fanatical, like a man or woman who is infatuated. We lose our sense of proportion and sobriety in life. This was what happened to Mary Magdalene. So the Lord had to raise her above an emotional attachment to His earthly body to a mystical encounter with Him. “Do not cling to me, because I have not yet ascended to my Father.” St. Paul said a similar thing: “Anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone.”
Best Practices for Using the Daily Scripture Reflections
- Encounter God through the spirit of prayer and the scripture by reflecting and praying the Word of God daily. The purpose is to bring you to prayer and to a deeper union with the Lord on the level of the heart.
- Daily reflections when archived will lead many to accumulate all the reflections of the week and pray in one sitting. This will compromise your capacity to enter deeply into the Word of God, as the tendency is to read for knowledge rather than a prayerful reading of the Word for the purpose of developing a personal and affective relationship with the Lord.
- It is more important to pray deeply, not read widely. The current reflections of the day would be more than sufficient for anyone who wants to pray deeply and be led into an intimacy with the Lord.
Note: You may share this reflection with someone. However, please note that reflections are not archived online nor will they be available via email request.
Written by His Eminence, Cardinal William SC Goh, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore © All Rights Reserved.
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