The day after the Jewish Passover, at dawn, after the Sabbath break, Mary is accompanied by a group of women. She goes to the tomb of Christ to embalm the body of Jesus. When she arrived in the funeral garden, she sees that the stone at the entrance is on the side. The tomb is empty.
The Gospel of John about the resurrection
“Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”
At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!”.
Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news. “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.”
The discovery of the relics
When Charles II discovered the relics of Mary Magdalene at Saint Maximin in 1279, the particle of flesh had remained adherent above the left brow bone, at the place of the forehead touched by the fingers of the risen Jesus when he appears to her, near the empty tomb, on Easter morning.
“Noli me tangere”. This is how we call this particle of flesh, covered with skin.
Here is what Cardinal de Cabassole says:
“The forehead indicates the truth of the body by a mark still existing on the right side above the temple; he who can destroy all things and keep what is corruptible, has preserved against the laws of nature from all dissolution the place where the imprint of his sacred hand is left by the printed contact, this is obvious to all those who consider ”.
This piece of flesh stayed in place until the middle of the 18th century. Doctors noted several times during the various checks on the relics, they have drawn up inventories.
It broke away in 1780, according to an inventory written during a new verification of the relics.
You can see it in the crypt, in a crystal bottle, in the reliquary containing the skull of Mary Magdalene.
