When Easter is a letdown, let us look at Magdalene

One of the most challenging essays every year is the one I write for Easter Sunday. The topic that naturally suggests itself is the theme of new life, which seems easy enough to discuss, but what does it really mean to behold afresh a vision of life renewed? How to convey the electricity of it, the hope, the fear of stepping into unknown potential?

I suppose I have difficulty because, even though I deeply feel a connection to the destiny God has placed within me, that future is still very much being birthed. As of now it’s incomplete. I have intuition, occasional glimpses of beauty, and halting progress in my interior life that encourage me to persist, but I don’t yet know precisely how to describe what I will one day become (or even if I’ll ever figure it out).

Grace is a reality that exceeds our imagination, so while I can gesture towards what a resurrected life might be like, I don’t really know.

Recently, I was reading an essay by Amelia McKee on her wonderful substack about art in which she highlights the work of the French artist Georges de La Tour. Out of 35 total paintings, five of them are of St. Mary Magdalene. Clearly, he had a great devotion to her.

It occurs to me that, if we’re trying to gain new insight into the meaning of Easter, we would do well to take a moment and attempt to look through her eyes (as La Tour is doing). She was the very first person to encounter the resurrected Christ, before any of the other disciples. What did she see?

The Magdalene has a famously checkered past. Forgiven of grave sins (or at least the sort of sins we consider worse than others, although I’m not so sure my own more socially acceptable sins are any less problematic), she was the one who anticipated the death of Christ and anointed his feet with costly perfume. She is one of the few to remain at the Cross until the bitter end. The disciples fled in the days after the Crucifixion and confusedly huddled together in a locked room. Meanwhile, St. Mary Magdalene is visiting the grave.

Her faithfulness is rewarded with a grand revelation. Over the previous years, she had been set free from her past and promised a new life. Suddenly, in a flash, that new life was incarnate and standing right there before her at the mouth of an empty tomb. In her astonishment, she reaches out and bear hugs Our Lord. She holds on and holds on until, finally, he gently removes himself from her grasp (she may have held on forever). He cannot stay. The new life he incarnates is too powerful. It’s too much for this world to hold, so he departs into the greater glory of heaven.

I can’t help but empathize with the Magdalene. The glory she witnesses is departing even as it arrives and she cannot follow. It must have been a helpless feeling. For her, Easter is celebration and grief mixed up into one big heartbreaking event. I often feel like this; perhaps you do, too. The beauty and love of this world is but an icon of eternity and I try so hard to grab tight and hold on, but cannot. It slips away. The best we can do is, like the Magdalene, contemplate the light that remains.

This is the situation La Tour depicts in his paintings. In The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame, she is alone in her room staring at a small flame, her hand resting on a symbol of mortality. On the desk are objects that represent continuing repentance. The light came and went (I imagine the painting to be post-Easter). The new life she’d hoped for was different than anticipated.

Now, she’s barely holding on. She only has a little candle of faith. Maybe she’s wondering if she somehow caused the disaster, if she didn’t repent enough, love enough, fight hard enough. It’s an image of what remains after our illusions are stripped away.

When this disillusionment strikes me because I’ve thought I can simply try harder, stop sinning, see the entirety of the glory of God right away, and become the perfect version of myself, my instinct is to give up. I protest that I need to give myself some space, rethink my expectations, and maybe get into a more comfortable zone and indulge in some mindless entertainment for a while.

To some extent, yes, we do need to understand that the new life we’re striving for is the work of a lifetime. We should be realistic. But that doesn’t mean to give up. St. Mary Magdalene is still contemplating the flame, still searching out glory. This is why she is one of the greatest of the saints. She never stops looking.

In another version of this painting, The Penitent Magdalen, La Tour depicts the flame doubled in a mirror. I find this version even more mysterious, as it indicates a conflagration from the other world made present within ours. The soul is a mirror that, if we polish it, reflects Heaven. Even if we aren’t there yet, we can intimate future glory. A greater destiny can be imprinted on us.

It turns out that the glory of new life - the people we’re trying to become and the grace that’s transforming us – is both more and less than we’d supposed. The reason I find Easter a difficult topic upon which to reflect is because, after Holy Week, Easter can feel like a letdown. We’ve built ourselves up for a life-changing experience but it slips from our embrace. We’re left trying to figure out exactly what has gone wrong. In this way, we’ve made the glory of the new life too small. We thought we’d get it right away as if we’re somehow prepared when, in fact, we very much are not prepared. The glory of our destiny is actually much more than we’d supposed.

The good news is that we’re given a lifetime to chase that glory over the horizon. That’s the optimism of Easter. That’s the hope in the flame St. Mary Magdalene contemplates. It represents an interior fire kindling in her heart, a living flame of love that will grow and grow.

La Tour’s paintings contain the glory of Easter, a reality that is complicated and transforming and sometimes completely confusing. At one moment we’re bathed in blinding light and in another are pushing through darkness, but the reality is that the glory is always there.

All we can do is hold on tight, and when we have to temporarily let go, maintain the courage to light a candle and tirelessly seek out the divine embrace once again.