was a moment of victory and triumph.

Mary Magdalen’s encounter with the Risen Jesus would exorcise this desolation – a desolation which was necessary, I believe, to prepare her heart for the new joy which was to come, and the mission the Lord had prepared for her. When she looked on the Face of her beloved Rabboni her anxiety evaporated and her faith was restored, renewed – transformed and deepened. She was a new woman: reborn, we might say, through the gaze of her resurrected Lord. Though she would want to stay and cling to him, Jesus immediately sends her out to the disciples to announce the resurrection. She will go before him like a new John the Baptist. This pattern will be repeated with the other disciples too:so in us the people of the world may come to see his Face, hear his voice through us, come to believe in him through the humble service we are called to carry out. As the disciples were sent out to proclaim Christ and the resurrection, so are we, and all of us are to bear the features of Christ himself. Jesus said to St Philip: “To see me is to see the Father”, now it must be said that to see the disciples of Christ is also to see Christ who is living and working in them. This was the intention of God from the beginning when he created man and woman in his own image and likeness; it was intended in the Incarnation when God became