Don’t Cling to Me
On this Solemnity of the Ascension, Pope Leo says Christ is drawing us upward toward the measure of God’s heart. The first thing the risen Jesus asked Mary Magdalene to do was let him go.
Dear friends,
Letters from Leo is publishing a series of scripture reflections for paid subscribers through the Easter season, drawing on the teachings of Pope Leo XIV and the daily readings of the Church.
These reflections are “quieter” than my usual essays. They are prayers as much as arguments — meditations on what the lectionary asks of us in the weeks between Easter and Pentecost. The aim is the same as everything else I do here: to make the Gospel inescapable in ordinary life.
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“Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.” — Acts 1:11
In John’s account of Easter morning, the first words the risen Jesus speaks to anyone are a refusal.
Mary Magdalene has just turned around and recognized him in the garden. She lunges to grab him. He stops her cold. “Do not cling to me,” he says, “for I have not yet ascended to the Father.”
I have read that line a hundred times, and it has always challenged me. It sounds harsh on a morning of pure mercy.
The woman who stayed through the crucifixion, who came to the tomb in the dark, who wept until heaven looked back at her — and the first thing the risen Lord tells her is to keep her hands off?
The Ascension does not soften this.
The instruction is bigger than a rebuke. Mary’s risen Lord is asking her to let him be larger than she has known him. The Jesus she had was always too small for who he actually is, and if she clings, she will keep her version of him while the real one slips past her. So he asks her to open her hands.
The Ascension is what makes this possible. It is the moment Jesus refuses to be contained by any cage we have built for him.
Pope Leo XIV preached this morning about this mystery and our obligation not to narrow God’s love. Here’s what he said and why it matters.
