John 20:15Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Great is the woman's zeal, and great her love. But there is still nothing lofty in her. Therefore at last Christ reveals to her the lofty mystery, not by His appearance, but by His voice.

And to His question, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?" she answered just as she had answered the angels.

Thinking that He was the gardener of the garden in which the tomb was, she says to Him: "Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him."

Mary was clearly speaking now without hidden purpose or any pretense, as she had done toward the disciples. She answered them in that way because they truly did not know.

She also wished to move them all to go to the tomb. But when they came and saw that the body was indeed not there, yet still did not believe the Resurrection, she herself wavered.

She considered the apostles' opinion more solid than her own. Under the influence of this change that had taken place in her, she answered the Lord and the angels.

She was truly convinced that the body had been taken from the tomb by someone.

Therefore He says: "Why are you weeping, woman? Whom are you seeking?" That is, cease your tears, since you have what you seek.

Behold, I am with you, He says, the cause of your weeping, evidently as One dead, subjected to unbearable sufferings, and besides carried away from the tomb.

And since I am alive and abide, cease your lamentation and pass over to joy. Thus this is the question of the One who ends weeping.

Indeed, it was fitting for the Lord to be the corrector of this part of humanity also. Because of the transgression in the first Adam, as in the firstfruits of the race, it was said to the whole nature of man: "You are earth, and to earth you shall return" (Gen 3:19).

But to the woman particularly it was said: "In sorrows you shall bear children" (Gen 3:16). Thus abiding in constant sorrows weighed upon woman as a punishment.

Therefore it was necessary that, through the voice of the One who condemned, the burden of that primordial curse also be destroyed.

Our Savior Christ was already ending the weeping of this woman, or rather of the whole female sex in Mary as in its firstfruits.

She was the first among women who, after lamenting the Savior's suffering and giving herself to grief over Him, was deemed worthy of the voice that ends weeping.

The power of this word evidently extends to the whole female sex, if she laments the crime against Christ after receiving faith in Him.

She speaks, as it were, with the words of the Psalm: "Do I not hate those who hate You, O Lord, and do I not waste away over Your enemies?

With perfect hatred I hated them; they became enemies to me" (Ps 138:21-22).

Our Lord Jesus Christ says this in order to free her from weeping. But she, taking the One speaking with her for one of the gardeners, readily promises to move the Savior's remains to other places.

She will do this if only he shows her where he has moved Him. Not yet understanding the great mystery of the Resurrection, she remained in such suppositions.

For the mind of woman is somewhat slow to be taught and receives even what is easy and not very difficult with reluctance. How much more does it struggle with miracles that surpass words?

For He said, "I have not yet ascended to My Father" (Jn 20:17), that is, for you I have not ascended, if you seek the living among the dead.

161. Scripture shows the difference between the Marys. One hastens to meet Him in order to see Jesus. The other turns back. One is greeted, the other rebuked.

Here you read: "Jesus says to her, Woman." The one who has not believed is a woman and continues to be called according to her bodily sex.

But the one who has believed reaches the state of a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph 4:13).

She is already free from the name of this age, from bodily sex, from windy youth, and from talkative old age.

Jesus says to her: "Woman, why are you weeping?" as though rebuking her. God does not await empty tears, but faith.

Tears are useful if you recognize Christ. "Whom are you seeking?" the Lord continues, as though reproving her burdensome delay.

He asks, "Whom?" He does not doubt whom she seeks, but she does not know. She continues seeking the Christ whom she thinks has been stolen.

Christ is before her. Why seek Him? Thus she does not know whom she seeks, if even when seeing, she does not recognize Him, but takes Him for the gardener.

162. "She, supposing Him to be the gardener, says to Him, Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him."

Let her still be unsteady in faith; her speech does not err. Let her take Him for the gardener, yet she addresses Him as the Son of God.

Let her not yet have believed, yet she is already going by the road of faith. Indeed, Christ Himself carried away His body by raising it.

This error of the woman is forgivable. Of course, she should not have doubted that Christ's body had been raised in the glory of the Resurrection.

But she wishes to hear this from Christ. Reverently she brings her faith to Christ, and desires to lift Him from the earth and see Him at the right hand of God. See Col 1:3.

But what does it mean that, on seeing the One whom she thought to be the gardener, she did not even tell Him about the One she sought? She said: "Sir, if you have carried Him away."

By her zeal she had already, as it were, spoken of the One for whom she wept. Now she speaks of the One whom she has not named.

The power of love usually does this in the soul. It thinks that everyone knows the one of whom it is always thinking.

Therefore this woman does not name Him whom she seeks, and yet says, "If you have carried Him away." She thinks that the One for desire of whom she constantly weeps is known to another.

For them these words were hidden. She could not even imagine that Jesus would rise. Therefore she paid no attention either to the emptiness of the tomb or to the angels sitting at its head and foot.

She was concerned only with the desire to learn where they had laid the body of her Lord. In such a state she did not even recognize Him when He asked her the cause of her tears.

And despite this, unbelievers dare to say that Magdalene believed so strongly that Jesus would necessarily rise, and so desired to see Him risen at any cost, that she reached a diseased condition.

In that condition, they say, she saw and heard what she passionately desired, but what in reality did not exist.

Wholly seized by the thought that the Lord had been taken away and laid somewhere unknown, she takes Jesus, who appeared to her, for the gardener. The burial cave in which Jesus' body had been laid was in a garden.

Thinking that the good gardener had moved Jesus' body somewhere safe from His enemies, she appeals to him with entreaty: "Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him.

I will guard Him better than you."

But if she thought that the Lord's body had been moved by order of the owner of the garden and tomb into another tomb, then she naturally thought this had been done with the gardener's help.

Therefore she asks him to show her the place, so that she might take Him from there and move Him to a safer place.

For perhaps, as Theophylact says, she feared that the Jews might mock even the dead body. Therefore she desired that it be moved to another place unknown to them.

"Him." She does not name the Lord, supposing that in any case the gardener knows of whom and of what she is speaking.

"I will take Him." In extraordinary sorrow and immeasurable love for the Lord, she seems to forget her strength, her person, and everything else.

She hopes to take and carry the Lord away alone, by herself. Or perhaps she only wished to know where He was, and then to do what was needed with the help and cooperation of the disciples and all those close to the Lord.