Today, someone asked me this question on Facebook (after reading this article):
…it reminds me of a question I have pondered for many years. In John’s account, once the “gardener” reveals himself as Jesus, Mary Magdalene reaches out to embrace him at which point he says: “Do not touch me, for I am not yet ascended to my Father.” Yet, in the meetings with the apostles, he tells Thomas to put his hand in his wounds. Both incidents preceded his ascension. Can you provide some explanation for this? 6,3-11.
There are various explanations for the famous Noli me tangere — “Do not touch me” (John 20:17) — of Jesus to the Magdalene. The simplest one is that Saint Mary Magdalene was not to tarry and waste the time that touching Him would have taken, but that she was to go on her mission to tell the Apostles the good news of the Resurrection post haste. Another explanation, one that I’ve read in Dom Guéranger, is that He is purifying her love of any sentimental accretions, so that her love of Him becomes more perfect, more spiritual.
Brian Kelly (RIP), gave further explanations in this piece: Why Did Our Resurrected Lord Forbid Mary Magdalene to Touch Him?
Brian did not deal with the part of the question here regarding why the Apostles were, by contrast, commanded to touch Him, so I will supplement his piece with some further thoughts.
The Apostles, of course, will be officially appointed witnesses of the Resurrection, and they needed to eat with and touch Jesus so that they could give testimony to his true bodily resurrection. In today’s Gospel, for instance (for Easter Tuesday: Luke 24:36-47), He makes it quite obvious — after miraculously appearing in the sealed Upper Room — that he has a real body: “See my hands and feet, that it is I myself; handle, and see: for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me to have. And when he had said this, he shewed them his hands and feet.” The gift of subtlety, which allowed Him to pass into the sealed room (and out of Our Lady’s womb without disturbing Her virginity, and out of the sealed tomb), did not mean that His Body was not real.
Thus, heresies like Docetism, were refuted ahead of time.
