Al Owski’s Reviews > The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe > Status Update

“Mary Magdalene serves as a witness to personal love and intimacy, which for most people is the best and easiest start on the path toward universal love. Then in the garden at Easter, she experienced a sudden shift of recognition toward the universal Presence of Christ. He, in fact, is the gardener! He has become every man and every woman!”

“If your Jesus remains too small, too sentimental, or too bound by time and culture, you do not get very far at all. For Jesus to become Christ, he must surpass the bounds of space and time, ethnicity, nationality, class, and gender. Frankly, he must rise above any religion formed in his name that remains tribal, clannish, xenophobic, or exclusionary. Otherwise, he is not the "Savior of the World" (John 4:42) at all”

“she knew and trusted Jesus's voice, even when she couldn't recognize him. How different that is from…common empirical knowing, which limits itself to … proof, to its own form of reason, and to… specific divine revelation. …if we don't learn how to send people on inner journeys or love journeys, the whole religious project will continue to fall apart, because we have no living witnesses of a transformed life.”

“It is also worth mentioning that the twelve men are consistently portrayed in the Gospel accounts as very slow to respond, and usually filled with doubt and hesitation (Mark 16:11, 13-14) and even resistance, denial, and betrayal, yet that is not brought up as an impediment to their leadership. But Mary seemed to recognize Jesus's new kind of Presence the moment he uttered her name.”

“Most still imagined that all of the apostles were male, and therefore priesthood and ministry should be reserved for men (as if gender were a quality of the True Self, the restored Self, or the ontological self in God!). This argument is undone, it seems to me, by Christ appearing first to Mary after the Resurrection, and by his charge for her to be his first witness.”

“If God is God, then the Divine Presence must necessarily be everywhere and universally accessible. If you can physically "touch" God, it's easy to think God is just here and not there, mine but not yours.”

“like Mary, we usually need to start with the concrete encounter before we move to the universal experience… Spiritual knowing is an inner encounter and a calm inner knowing… We need this intimate inner knowing because we can't be left at the visual level or we will always think we can localize, limit, or capture God as a private possession (see John 20:29), or as something that can or must be "proven" to others”

“He was saying that the Christ is untouchable in singular form because he is omnipresent in all forms as we soon see as the "gardener" at the tomb (John 20:15), as a wayfarer on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-15), and as a man tending a cooking fire by the side of a lake (John 21:4, 9).”

“What happens next? Translations say "she turned," or "she knew," or "turning to face him," she cries out, "Rabonni!" which means "Master" (John 20:13-16). Instantly, Mary sees the one before her in a different way, you might say relationally instead of merely physically. She realizes it is still Jesus, but he has fully become the Christ.”

“In John's account, two angels appear and ask her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She replies, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." She then turns around and sees a man whom she doesn't recognize. Mary supposes he is the gardener (John 20:15) and asks him where he has taken Jesus. Then, in one of the most dramatic moments in the Gospels, the man simply says her name, "Mary!" ”