by Walt Chura
Today (July 22) is the feast of St. Mary Magdalene. She has been adopted by many Roman Catholics who favor the opening of the presbyterate (aka ordained priesthood) to women. She is known as “the apostle to the Apostles” in the Eastern (Orthodox) Christian Churches and to more and more “orthodox” (aka conservative) R.C.s. She is also revered among the Baha’i. Her celebrity grew among the general public, ironically, do to the sillinesses that Dan Brown presented to his great benefit in “The DaVinci Code,” i.e. the marriage of Jesus and Mary and their offspring.
Of course, Pope Gregory the Great et al. misread the Gospel accounts creating misunderstandings as well. Suffice it to say the Pope confused the Magdalene with another Mary, i.e. Lazarus’s sister, and an penitent woman unnamed in the Gospel texts–who had in common with the Magdalene that “she loved much,” but Mary was NOT a prostitute, as the unnamed may have been. I’ll get back to Gregory shortly with lines from his work on her that I cherish.
While I revere M.M. as “the apostle to the Apostles” and find no good Scriptural basis for excluding women from the presbyterate since there seems to be some historical precedent for including them, her greatest appeal to me is her mystical persistence and heart sense, qualities I’d like to see in more priests. Below I let the aforementioned Gregory describe these virtues in her.
“From a homily on the Gospels by Gregory the Great, pope
She longed for Christ, though she thought he had been taken away
When Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and did not find the Lord’s body, she thought it had been taken away and so informed the disciples. After they came and saw the tomb, they too believed what Mary had told them. The text then says: The disciples went back home, and it adds: but Mary wept and remained standing outside the tomb.
We should reflect on Mary’s attitude and the great love she felt for Christ; for though the disciples had left the tomb, she remained. She was still seeking the one she had not found, and while she sought she wept; burning with the fire of love, she longed for him who she thought had been taken away. And so it happened that the woman who stayed behind to seek Christ was the only one to see him. For perseverance is essential to any good deed, as the voice of truth tells us: Whoever perseveres to the end will be saved.
At first she sought but did not find, but when she persevered it happened that she found what she was looking for. When our desires are not satisfied, they grow stronger, and becoming stronger they take hold of their object. Holy desires likewise grow with anticipation, and if they do not grow they are not really desires. Anyone who succeeds in attaining the truth has burned with such a great love. As David says:My soul has thirsted for the living God; when shall I come and appear before the face of God? And so also in the Song of Songs the Church says: I was wounded by love;and again: My soul is melted with love.
Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek? She is asked why she is sorrowing so that her desire might be strengthened; for when she mentions whom she is seeking, her love is kindled all the more ardently.
Jesus says to her: Mary. Jesus is not recognized when he calls her “woman”; so he calls her by name, as though he were saying: Recognize me as I recognize you; for I do not know you as I know others; I know you as yourself. And so Mary, once addressed by name, recognizes who is speaking. She immediately calls him rabboni, that is to say, teacher, because the one whom she sought outwardly was the one who inwardly taught her to keep on searching.”
We have our English word “maudlin” from Mary’s profuse tears. No doubt the usage began with men who were so enraptured by cold reason that they could not understand what became known among the mystics as “the gift of tears.” Tears may pour out of the eyes of our head but they spring from the depths of our heart.
Yes, as Wm. Stringfellow once said to Jerry Falwell, “Christ came to take away our sins, not our brains.” But as Frank Sinatra sang, “Ya gotta have heart . . . miles and miles and miles of heart.”
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