The people who figure prominently on Resurrection morning are Jesus himself and the disciples. Jesus rose, but the disciples didn't expect anything of the sort, even though they had been told that his suffering was necessary.

His death left them hopeless and frightened, till the resurrection experience took them over, and transformed them. This is perhaps the dominant tableau in the New Testament account of the Resurrection.

Mary Magdalene is another Resurrection figure, whose importance has never matched that of the disciples. In Resurrection accounts she is hardly ever centre stage, though regarding Jesus, she displayed a fearlessness and courage, quite alien to the experience of the disciples.

Mary has been "identified" as the woman caught in adultery, and the sinner who poured rich ointment on Jesus' feet and wiped them with her tears. Nothing in either text says she was any of these women, but the "identifications" persist. In another apocryphal story, Jesus is said to have come down from the cross and ran off with her to India .

Mary hurried to the tomb early on Easter morning, while it was still dark, to anoint the body with spices. Given the atmosphere surrounding the death of Jesus, this was an act of great bravery. The disciples at this point were still in hiding, fearing retaliation against anyone associated with Jesus.

Mary was oblivious to all of that. As she hurried along, memories of happier times must have occurred to her, when Jesus was alive. This is not speculation. It follows from what she was on her way to do -- perform a ritual of love on his corpse. Jesus was obviously someone loved very much to have warranted this kind of risk.

She gets to the tomb and she can't find him. " They've taken my Lord away ," she complains to the angel inside the tomb, " and I don't know where they have put him ."

Jesus speaks to her but she takes him for the gardener, and repeats her demand: " Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and remove him ." Then Jesus calls her name: " Mary!" " Rabbuni! " she says, in shock.

If, hypothetically, it were left to us to complete St John's account from this point on, there's no doubt about how we would proceed. We would say they just fell into each other's arms, embracing wildly, hugging one another and so on. But no such thing occurs. Jesus says to her: " Do not cling to me ."

Why does he demur? The reason is that the Jesus Mary clings to is the Jesus of her memory. That's whom she thinks she has regained. But that Jesus is not the risen Lord, and she must let go of him, if the risen Lord is to become accessible to her.

In the second major discourse in John's Gospel, Jesus reminded the disciples that they will have to relinquish their hold on him, if the Paraclete is to come (John 16:7).

In fact, from the death through the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, relinquishment recurs as a prevailing paschal imperative. If new forms of life and spirit are to be available, old forms have to be let go.

It's the basic paschal principle, and it is what Jesus intends in saying to Mary: " do not cling to me ."

The paschal mystery refers not only to the "life-through-death" transformation that marked Jesus' life, but the life-though-death possibilities we confront again and again in the course of our lives. Jesus spoke of daily dying, which means that we can expect the paschal process to be a recurring feature of life.

A basic temptation, however, is choosing not to die - not to relinquish, because what must be let go has become too much part of who we are, too familiar to do without.

Thus, in middle age we often hold on to youth as though youth alone were the only life worth having. Only the sheer passage of time forces us to relinquish our hold on the impossible. Couples hold on to the idea of the honeymoon, when marriage was bliss, after a decade or more into married life.

Another obvious illustration of this lack of paschal dynamic is how basic factions in the Church view the Church itself. If I am of conservative inclination and lament the passing of the pre-Vatican II Church, I try to restore that Church by challenging the changes that have taken place, and denying their reality.

I live an unhealthy nostalgia, permanently yearning for "the good old days." If I am liberal by temperament and am quite happy that the old Church is gone, I still cling to that Church through my hatred of the past, through constantly lamenting how bad things were, how much change was needed, how narrow and backward conservatives tend to be, and so on.

Each faction remains like Mary, clinging to a remembered body, yet to receive a new Lord and a new Spirit.

There may be other things we need to relinquish, a view of the Bible, for instance, a childhood view of God or Jesus. Faith develops and we must develop with it. Our internal faith structures must grow as we grow.

Unless I let go of the Jesus of my boyhood, for instance, I will be blind to forms of his presence in my life as an adult. The implications of not letting go are poignantly captured in Luke's Gospel, in Jesus' walk with the disciples to Emmaus.

The disciples cannot recognise him because they are still focussed on his former reality, on their former understanding and images of him, and their former ways of seeing him. They are so taken with the way he was formerly present to them, they are not open to seeing him as he walks among them now. He is the "s tranger ."

Mary Magdalene is an underappreciated resurrection figure, from at last two points of view. She showed a fearlessness in standing by Jesus at the Cross and at the tomb, in a way that made her male colleagues the meanest cowards by comparison.

In her love for Jesus she also unintentionally illustrates an essential feature of the paschal dynamic: unless we let go of what is superseded, we deny ourselves the possibility of new life and new spirit.