Jesus Appears to the Women
Posted Sunday, April 9, 783 AUC at 9:17 a.m.
JERUSALEM — Mary Magdalene was the first to lay eyes on the resurrected
Jesus early Sunday morning. Seeing the tomb door open at sunrise, she didn’t
go inside the tomb but assumed that someone had stolen the body of Jesus.
Even while Peter and John went inside to see the evidence of the resurrection,
Mary stood outside the tomb, weeping. After the others had gone, she looked
inside to see two angels in white sitting, one at the head, and one at the
feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. They said to her, “Ma’am, why are
you crying?” She answered them, “Because they have taken my Lord away, and
I don’t know where they have put him.” Then she turned around and saw Jesus
himself standing there, but she didn’t realize that it was Jesus.
Jesus asked her, “Ma’am, why are you crying? Who are you looking for?”
Mary supposed that he was the gardener, so she said to him, “Sir, if you
have carried him away, please tell me where you have put him, and I will
take him away.”
Jesus simply spoke her name: “Mary,” and instantly she recognized him.
She called him “Rabboni,” which is Aramaic for “Teacher.”
A short while later, Jesus met the other women on their way to meet His
disciples. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped His feet and
worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t be afraid; go tell my
brothers to go to Galilee, and they will see me there.”
While the women were going, some of the guards came into the city and
reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. The chief priests
met with the elders and came up with a plan: they gave the soldiers a large
sum of money, instructing them to say, “His disciples came during the night
and stole him away while we slept.” They also said, “If word of this gets
to the governor, we will make sure you aren’t held responsible.” So the
soldiers took the money and did as they were told, and this story was
widely spread among the Jews.