The angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.’ When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ Then he said, ‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.

Jesus said to Mary, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

Curiosity at signs and wonders causes us to turn our attention toward God and want to investigate further.  Investigation may turn into what we think is familiarity, but God is always and forever infinitely beyond our powers of comprehension.  Our attitude before him must always include profound awe, "fear and trembling."  This fear is not the kind of human anxiety whereby we are afraid of him because of what he can do to us.  Jesus dismissed this fear by telling us many times "fear not."  Rather it is that holy fear which is the beginning of wisdom.

Mary drew near to Jesus at his resurrection in order to hold onto him in humanly affection.  But Jesus had passed into a completely different reality and did not want the one he loved to understand him as merely having come back from the dead.  Despite her closeness to Jesus Mary too had to remove the sandals from her feet in the presence of the living God.  Of this passage St. Augustine remarked "Touch is, as it were, the end of knowledge; and He was unwilling that a soul intent upon Him should have its end in thinking Him only what He seemed to be."  (de Trin. notionis)

Is a sense of profound awe and holy fear of God missing in our hearts?  Let us be like the tax collector, to whom Jesus gave us as an example.  "Standing far off, he would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, 'be merciful to me, a sinner!'  I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other."  (Luke 18.13-14)