In the days after Vatican II they would bring the priests and brothers into the seminary for “theological updating.” One of the priests once came out of one session muttering under his breathe the words of Mary Magdalene: “They have taken my Lord, and I don’t know where they laid him.” He was discovering that his simple catechism understanding of the faith needed to take into account the complex nature of the gospel narratives, the Jewishness of Jesus, the role that Mary Magdalene played as the first preacher of the faith. We expand our notion of what it means to be a believer when we hear the Lord call our name and we recognize him in the “gardeners,” the ordinary people, in our lives.
