Rosa 'Mary Magdalene'  It fades into a virginal white with age. Scan -Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

"Touch me not for I am a teapot." Dolores Reyes de Irureta Goyena

Noli me tangere is the Latin version of a phrase spoken, according to John 20:17, by Jesus to Mary Magdalene when she recognized him after his resurrection.

A loose translation into English would be "don't cling to me or "don't touch me." The original Koine Greek phrase, Μή μου ἅπτου (mē mou haptou), is better represented in translation as "cease holding on to me" or "stop clinging to me", i.e. an ongoing action, not one done in a single moment.

The biblical scene of Mary Magdalene's recognizing Jesus Christ after his resurrection became the subject of a long, widespread and continuous iconographic tradition in Christian art from Late Antiquity to the present. Pablo Picasso, for example, used the painting Noli me tangere by Antonio da Correggio, stored in the Museo del Prado, as an iconographic source for his famous painting La Vie (Cleveland Museum of Art) from the so-called Blue Period.

Wikipedia

As a little boy I heard “Noli me tangere” a lot from my grandmother Dolores's lips in relation to a 19^th century  Philippine patriot’s (José Rizal) novel by that name (published in 1887). It was about the inequities of the Spanish colonizers and Roman Catholic clergy. It was published in Spanish. The book has vanished (I have no idea when it disappeared) from my library.

For me Easter is a time of reflection. While Time may have told us that God Is Dead (in the last century) it is difficult to erase (modern digital term re-format?) from my mind the years of a Roman Catholic upbringing plus a four year education at St. Edward’s High School in Austin. Thanks to Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. who taught our class not religion but theology (what did we know? ) I am able to explain all the intricacies of Church Doctrine.

Noli me tangere - Corregio

This time of reflection which is tinged by the memory of my grandmother calling me in (around 1 in the afternoon) when I was playing in the street. I was  to kneel with my mother as she read the last 7 Words of Christ. And of course there was no music to be played in our radio that whole day.

A bit of mirth was allowed on the next day Sábado de Gloria.

As I reflect on Easter during Easter one of my thoughts is about taking Rebecca, my then 8-year-old granddaughter to the lovely church of La Valenciana in Guanajuato, Mexico. Upon entering the the church on the left side was a very large baroque style painting that featured Christ and a crowd. Smack in the middle was a very blond, long-haired woman. I explained to Rebecca that the woman was Mary Madgalene about to be stoned for being an adulteress.

Brother Edwin had explained to us that this scene is the only one described in the bible where Christ is known (perhaps) to have written. He writes or makes some signs on the ground and the crowd disperses. It would seem that Christ has written some of the sins of those present.

And Mary Magdalene leads to my often re-read in Spanish of José Saramago’s El Evangelio Según Jesucristo. In this novel Mary Magdalene brings in an exhausted and sore Christ into her house. She cares for him an ultimately teaches the man the ways of a man in her bed. Such was the scandal of this novel in Portugal that Saramago left for the Canary Islands. When he won the Nobel his country tried to woo him back.

I believe (in 100% of the meaning of that word) that to think of these events (be they true or not) they are good for the soul even though they might bring some melancholy hours and insomnia on a Sábado de Gloria.


 He suspects the woman is a prostitute, not because he is particularly good at guessing people's professions at first glance, besides, not that long ago he himself would have been identified as a shepherd by the smell of goat, yet now everyone would say, He's a fisherman, for he lost one smell only to replace it with another. The woman reeks of perfume, but Jesus, who may be innocent, has learned certain facts of life by watching the mating of goats and rams, he also has enough common sense to know that just because a woman uses perfume, it does not necessarily mean she is a whore.

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
José Saramago translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero