This is a fictional account based on the true events recorded in the Bible. It is written from Mary Magdalene’s perspective to help us imagine what she may have felt and experienced on the morning she first saw the risen Christ (John 20:11–18).
I didn’t expect to be the first. Not me. Not Mary from Magdala. But I was there—and He called me by name.
I still remember the chill of that early morning. My hands trembled around the jar of spices as I walked toward the tomb. I came to the tomb while it was still dark. Maybe I just couldn’t stay away. After everything He had done for me—after He had set me free from all that darkness—how could I not go, even if all I expected to find was a sealed tomb and memories too heavy to carry?
But the tomb wasn’t sealed.
The stone was rolled away.
I froze. My heart raced. I thought someone had taken Him. That even in death, He couldn’t be left in peace. I ran to tell Peter and John, and they came and looked. But when they left, I stayed. I couldn’t leave. Where else was I supposed to go?
So I wept.
I knelt there, crying, staring into the emptiness of the tomb. I saw two angels sitting inside, but even they couldn’t shake the sorrow off of me.
“Woman, why are you weeping?” they asked.
“Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.”
I turned and saw a man standing behind me. I didn’t recognize Him at first. My eyes were clouded with tears, and my heart wasn’t expecting hope.
“Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?”
I thought He was the gardener.
“Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away.”
And then it happened.
He said my name.
“Mary!”
One word. One voice. And I knew.
All the sorrow, all the confusion, all the weight I had carried since that horrible Friday—it broke in an instant.
“Rabboni!”
I wanted to hold Him, to never let Him go, but He told me not to cling to Him. He had a purpose for me. A message to carry. Me. A woman once lost, once tormented, once forgotten by the world.
He told me to go to His brethren and tell them, “I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.”
So I ran. With tears still fresh and joy burning through my chest, I ran.
I was the first to see Him. The first to hear His voice. The first to carry the news that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead.
And it wasn’t because I was important in the eyes of the world.
I was not. Yet He knew me. He saw my sorrow, and He called me by name.
And if He saw me, He sees you too.
John 10:3
“To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.”