Tuesday of the Octave of Easter
"Let all the house of Israel therefore know certainly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified."
Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?"
Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are far off, even as many as the Lord our God will call to himself." With many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, "Save yourselves from this crooked generation!"
Then those who gladly received his word were baptized. There were added that day about three thousand souls.
For the Lord's word is right. All his work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of the loving kindness of the Lord.
Behold, the Lord's eye is on those who fear him, On those who hope in his loving kindness, To deliver their soul from death, To keep them alive in famine.
But Mary was standing outside at the tomb weeping. So as she wept, she stooped and looked into the tomb, And she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. They asked her, "Woman, why are you weeping?"
She said to them, "Because they have taken away my Lord, and I don't know where they have laid him." When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, and didn't know that it was Jesus.
Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?"
She, supposing him to be the gardener, said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away."
Jesus said to her, "Mary."
She turned and said to him, "Rabboni!" which is to say, "Teacher!"
Jesus said to her, "Don't hold me, for I haven't yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brothers and tell them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'"
Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had said these things to her.
The movement from despair to recognition threads through both readings like a golden cord. Mary weeps at the empty tomb, searching for a dead body, while just chapters earlier in Acts, Peter's audience is "cut to the heart" by the truth of what they've done. Both encounters begin in darkness - Mary in literal darkness at dawn, the crowd in the spiritual darkness of having rejected their Messiah.
Notice how recognition comes through the personal. Jesus doesn't reveal himself to Mary through theological argument or miraculous display, but simply by speaking her name: "Mary." There's something profound about being known by name, especially in our anonymous world of digital interactions and hurried encounters. The voice that calls us by name cuts through our confusion and grief just as surely as it did for Mary.
The crowd in Acts experiences something similar - Peter's words pierce their hearts not because of clever rhetoric, but because truth has a way of finding us where we live. Their response - "What shall we do?" - echoes Mary's frantic searching. Both stories reveal that our deepest longings aren't really about having answers, but about being found.
Consider how baptism, which Peter offers as the response to their anguish, mirrors Mary's encounter. Both involve a kind of death and resurrection - going under the water and emerging new, just as Mary's grief transforms into joy when she recognizes the risen Christ. The three thousand who were baptized that day experienced their own version of hearing their names called.
The tenderness here is that God meets us in our searching, our weeping, our desperate questions. Even when we're looking in the wrong direction, even when we mistake the gardener for just a gardener.
Where in your life are you searching for something you think is lost? What would it mean to hear your name spoken with divine recognition today?