“Noli Me Tangere,” A Touching Phrase

Inspired by Jean-Luc Nancy’s book, Noli Me Tangere

These are strange, topsy-turvy times when our everyday sense of things has collapsed and come undone. “Offering to visit seems like a threat,” a friend wrote to me last summer. Staying away was the friendliest thing he could imagine doing. With such inversions of familiar meanings, it is very nearly the end of the world as we know it. Every embrace—hugging and kissing, for instance—makes me worry I am a Judas, sealing my friendships with a kiss of death. When friends and loved ones remain near only by saying “Don’t touch me,” the poignancy of a life happily lived with others is all too vivid, the longing that comes with intimacy all too palpable. We’ve seen the photographs:

Al Bello / Getty Images
          Piero Cruciatti / Getty Images

Many of us said “Don’t touch me” to those we love and those who love us when we were sick with the plague, and yet what was said was not, I know, what I wanted in my heart of hearts. What had the world come to that “Don’t touch me, stay away” was the best expression of my love?

“Don’t touch me” has become a very touching phrase. It’s the truth. How could we not see that now at the end of the world?

It is also a phrase spoken by Jesus: Noli me tangere in Latin or M­ē mou haptou in Greek. The words are spoken to Mary Magdalene in a scene frequently classed among the so-called Easter stories.[1]

The staging is simple, even if the scene, like most biblical narratives, leaves a lot unsaid and therefore raises a lot of questions. Mary weeps as she stands gazing into the emptiness and darkness of the tomb where her beloved Jesus has been laid to rest—when suddenly he appears. This visit is to say he is leaving. For what the Jesus whose presence has overwhelmed her says is, “Do not touch me, for I am going on my way to the Father.” His being there with her now means he is leaving; in other words, he visits her by departing the scene at once. This could be put the other way, too: Departing is how Mary’s beloved Jesus is present with her, such that she enjoys the presence of her beloved only in not holding onto it. For Jesus is “going to the Father” and that means leaving absolutely.[2]His presence means, in short, their separation—a truth he reveals when he says, “Do not touch me.”

The Greek of which the Latin noli me tangere is a translation is perhaps more telling. Rendered directly into English, it says something to the effect of “Don’t cling to me” or “Don’t hold me back,” “Release me,” or “Let me go.” [3]

Clinging to me holds me back, Jesus says, and in holding me back from going away, you cling to me. To hold onto him would be unwelcome and unwelcoming; it would be to miss the visit that consists in departure, to not welcome the appearing that consists in leaving. “Don’t cling to me,” then, but let me go. That would be most welcome.

What has advanced upon Mary is this distance into which her beloved is going, the distance that comes over her with the presence of her love. Walter Benjamin describes the phenomenon that appears this way as aura: “The unique phenomenon of a distance however close it may be.” But what Benjamin has taught us to call “aura” is what theology might also call “glory.” What visits Mary is the glorified body, after all—the glorified body of Jesus, who is now rising to the glory of the father. That glory is the distance that draws near to Mary in the appearing of her departing beloved—the glorious presence of her beloved visiting her.

What is so glorious about being with her beloved when holding on is unwelcome and misses the beloved’s presence? Perhaps it is just touching.

For it is a touching scene, very tender. It is as if “Don’t touch me” were one of the most touching things we could hear from those we love. Painters have shown this. They depict Mary deeply touched in welcoming this departure—bowed or prostrate, overwhelmed with grief, despondency, or reverence.

Noli me Tangere by Antonio da Correggio, c. 1525
Touch Me Not (Noli me tangere) by James Tissot, c. 1886-1894
Noli Me Tangere by Fra Bartolommeo, c. 1508

Much that is touching can be felt in the hands and their gestures—Jesus’s hands, for instance, which at once bless Mary and keep her at a distance. Just how touching this visit is can be seen and felt in the space that grows between their separated and separating hands, limp yet longing, outstretched yet losing their grip.

Like Mary, we are touched, gloriously, by what goes away, all the more so by what goes away absolutely. Perhaps nothing touches me more than what touches me by saying, “Don’t touch me, for I am going away gloriously.” Separation touches. This is the logic by which the glorious life of a body appears to touch Mary. It is perhaps the logic of all that touches me.

It was also the truth laid bare by the pandemic’s apocalypse of our world.

A pandemic: it’s everywhere. An apocalypse: the whole world falls apart. There is no place to hide when the whole world is affected.

Surrounded by death, I look for signs of life. Friends, others, anybody whose presence makes me feel life goes on, that these are living times and time still the realm of the living. Is that what Mary was looking for when, grief-stricken, she peered into the darkness of the tomb? Was she also looking for signs of life in the darkness that surrounded her? It seems more likely she was looking for confirmation that Jesus was dead, that death had come upon him and his body rested safely in the tomb, that thieves had not stolen it away. And yet, what she got was the glorious appearance of a body that calls her by her name and speaks to her. What better sign of life? She has had a revelation.

That revelation takes form: it says, “Don’t touch me. Don’t hold me back. I am going on my way to my Father, into the glorious distance of my Father.” That is to say, “Don’t cling to me, for I am on my way to the place from which there is no return.” If there is no better sign of life than this body that speaks to her, what this sign of life might signify is not easy to take. Mary’s revelation is a hard one for anyone to accept: the departure of death does not only surround us in the bodies of the departed, but is also a truth the living carry around with them, each of us, myself, you, and all the others in whom I seek signs of life. The signs of life are the departure whose unknown and impossible meaning has been realized in the bodies of the departed.

This is not a revelation I wanted to have to receive. It is not an easy truth to learn to be in. I did not want the apocalypse disclosing that truth to come so soon. I would rather the secret have remained hidden a while longer. With COVID-times, Noli me tangere came too soon. It’s the truth of all that touches us—that soon it will leave us touched, that soon we will be touched by its leaving. I just don’t want that apocalypse now.

Jeffrey L. Kosky
Lexington, VA, 11 November 2021

[1]My invitation to contribute to this project suggested I reflect on Jean-Luc Nancy’s book, Noil me tangere: On the Raising of the Body (Fordham UP, 2008) [Originally published in French as Noli me tangere: Essai sur la levée du crops (Bayard, 2003)]. What I have written is inspired by that book, a book that was written well before the covid pandemic. It is not an explanation of Nancy’s book, but it could not have been written without Nancy’s book.

[2]It is the opposite direction from being-with-others in the world we have in common, as Jesus indicates when he tells Mary Magdalene, who will have been left behind, abandoned, that she should not hold onto him or follow beside him, but go another direction, that is, to the brethren: “I am going to my father,” he tells her, “but you, you go to my brethren and say to them…”

[3]Mary is told, “Don’t hold on to me” after she calls him, “Rabbouni,” a title she would have used frequently to speak with him in the world familiar to her. “Don’t hold on to me,” he says, as if he were telling her not to cling to the world she recognizes and old understandings of the things in it. Rudolf Bultmann emphasizes this point in his commentary. Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Westminster John Know Press, 1971).

Jeffrey Kosky is Professor of Religion at Washington and Lee University. 

Our project takes the words spoken by Jesus to Mary Magdalene in the garden after she discovers his empty tomb — noli me tangere (“touch me not”) — as a provocation for reflection on the COVID-19 pandemic, and on other pandemics, viral and social, that engulf us.

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