Did the Resurrected Jesus Appear to His Mother?

How did our Blessed Mother know that her son was risen? Did she learn from Peter, John or Mary Magdalen? Did she receive her own appearance? Or (as I will suggest) did she know, with certainty, in a more fitting manner? The Scriptures have no mention of a separate appearance to Mary and (aside from a misunderstood reference in St.Ambrose) there is likewise no evidence of such a tradition in the first millenium. Even St. Thomas knew nothing of such a revelation. However, just after the time of Aquinas, the tradition of such an appearance spread quickly and gained remarkably unanimous assent in medieval Christendom. St. Ignatius of Loyola has a meditation based on this event and assumes that anyone who doubts this reality is clearly a heretic. I think his logic is sound but I differ slightly in my conclusion. Our own St. John Paul II advocated forcefully for acceptance of this tradition in an audience in which he stated: "...the unique and special character of the Blessed Virgin’s presence at Calvary and her perfect union with the Son in his suffering on the Cross seem to postulate a very particular sharing on her part in the mystery of the Resurrection." http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/audiences/1997/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_21051997_en.html) Here again the logic is impeccable: Mary is close to Jesus at his conception, birth, private life, (not so clearly in his public life), in his passion, at Pentecost and now in heaven. It is hard to imagine that she was sidelined for the Resurrection. My suggestion is that she knew with certainty, through her mystic union with her son, that he was risen. She did not need an appearance: such would have been frivolous. We know that the disciples, with their lack of faith, desperately needed our Lord to show himself to them: doubting Thomas who touches the wounds, the discouraged and uncomprehending disciples at Emmaeus, the disbelieving apostles and their fishing expedition, and Peter with his three-fold denial redeemed by his triple-profession-of-love. But Mary did not need her son to appear: she already knew. I imagine it happened in the following manner. When Mary held the corpse of her son (the Pieta), she would have sunk into the deepest possible grief. When Jesus died, she herself died a psychological or metaphysical death, even as she continued to breathe. With his passion finally ended, there ensued the infinite quiet of death and she herself would have been relieved of the state of immense tension she suffered throughout the passion and would have relaxed into a quasi-death state herself. I imagine a psycho-neuro-physical collapse similar to what we know as "rest in the Spirit" or "being slain in the Spirit." Her sense of desolation was so complete and profound that is it more than metaphorical to say that she herself descended, with her Son, into hell. This dark night surely was deeper than that of St. John of the Cross or any other mystic. However, as she grasped her sons's corpse, as she collapsed in her own meta-death and sunk to the pit of hell, she knew, quietly and intuitively, deeply in her spirit, not emotionally or cognitively, but deeply-deeply-deeply that He had triumphed, that God had triumphed, that He was alive. Perhaps she was not discursively aware of it: she would have been incapable of saying "He is risen!" But she knew! Rising on Saturday, she would have gone about her day quietly, still exhausted and deeply grieving, but slowly and organically the Joy and Hope and intuition would grow. She would have been comforting others and in this her sense of God's presence and victory would be emerging. By the time she went to bed on Saturday night she would have known: Jesus is alive! She would know with complete interior certainty. And Sunday morning she would awaken and rise with her heart and soul exploding with Joy and Love! She had died, as a mother dies if her child dies, but she was alive in heaven...in heaven on earth. It was just a matter of time before her body would be taken to be with her soul which was already with her Son. Before, during and after Pentecost she would be a bounteous, flowing fountain of the Holy Spirit for the Church. She would be assumed into heaven, possibly from two distinct locations, Jerusalem and Ephesus, as differing traditions affirm. Since the Church has not spoken definitively on this question, we have the theological freedom to entertain any of these three, or other, views. However this third understanding does the most justice to what we know of the boundless union of love between Mary and her Son.