July 22 -Mary of Magdalene
Mary of Magdala is my patron
saint and today is her feast day. She is the saint name I took for my
confirmation. Through the years and through my reconversion to the faith,
I have come to love Mary Magdalene and embrace her as my patron saint.
She is often associated with the woman caught in adultery, (John 8:1-11) but
there is no biblical reference that the woman was Mary Magdalene. She is
mentioned as the women whom Jesus has cast out seven demons (Luke 8:2, Mark
16:9) and of course she was one of the women who stayed at the cross of Jesus
even when others fled. Maybe the most important role she played as the apostle
to the apostles is to be the first to witness Jesus after the resurrection!
Early on the
first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the
tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. John 20:1
When Mary of Magdala stood outside of the empty tomb, she thought
that her savior’s body was stolen. Scripture tells us it was dark when she
arrived at the tomb. This detail, that
it was still dark, has haunted me over the last year.
My usual routine in the morning is to wake up early and grab my
bible and a cup of coffee. This is the
only time of the day, when everyone is sleeping still, that I can find time to
pray. As soon as the house is awake, I
can only hear the TV and the conversation in the house and even taking refuge
in a bedroom – I find little enough peace to remain in prayer.
Over the last 6 months or so my routine has been upset. Job changes, adult children living at home
and rotten weather that has kept me in doors has meant I need to find an
alternate time to pray or I need to wake earlier to find the quiet I need.
When I find that prayer time, that time with Jesus, I find that I
am a softer person. By softer I mean I find it easier to love and to just be. I
am calmer and dare I say it, I am probably easier to be loved! Without that prayer time, I notice a hardness
about me. My friends and family probably
notice it too. It usually around that time I feel a nudge to get back to
confession and reestablish my morning prayer routine. I need to enter into prayer while it is still
dark, even if that means a 5:00 a.m. alarm.
Last summer I was blessed to meet my daughter as she was
backpacking through Europe. We met in
France and toured Paris and the south of France. Since the purpose of the trip was to be with
my daughter, it was far from being a pilgrimage, but our travels did include
some sacred sites.
While in Aix-en-Provence
we visited the Saint Sauveur Cathedral which contains first-century church
archeology and pillars of a Magdalene shrine. Streets of Aix once formed a Magdalene
abbey. Archeological digs are still uncovering convents and churches dedicated
to her. Tradition tells us that it is in France that Mary Magdalene fled to
continue to evangelize. It is here that she taught about
the transformative power of love and converted the Provence and the royal
family to Christianity.
It is said that Mary Magdalene retired to the wooded
cliffs near Saint Victoire Mountain where she lived out the rest of her life. I didn’t get the chance to visit there but it
is a popular pilgrimage site to this day.
I knew very
little of her legacy in that area of the world until I had the chance to visit
there. It seems Mary Magdalene is everywhere in the south of France. I This may
sound strange, but I could feel a softness in the air while visiting
there. The same sort of softness I feel
in myself when I spend time with Jesus in scripture or adoration. Maybe the softness comes from the Lavender
fields, but even the fragrance of the hills seems to point us to a greater
love.
Modern film, fiction
and feminists would have Mary portrayed as a romantic love interest of
Christ. Not only is this portrayal
inaccurate, it loses the point of the greater love that Mary of Magdala had for
Jesus. Mary’s love is of the “agape”
kind. The highest form of love, charity, and the
love of God for man and of man for God. It embraces a universal, unconditional
love that transcends and persists regardless of circumstance.
Part of my
haunting over the last year has been a longing to return to the place of Mary
Magdalene. I feel like there is something my patron saint wants to teach me.
Most likely it is something about love.
This seems to be
the time for Mary Magdalene to become anew a role model for women in our
church. In 2016, Pope Francis elevated her feast
day to a major feast day marking women as the first evangelizers. The decree
that was issued by the Vatican, says that this woman, “recognized as one who
loved Christ and who was very dear to him,” can be considered by the faithful
as “a paradigm of the ministry of women in the Church.”
Mary Magdalene
has also been at the center of the ministry of WINE: Women in the New
Evangelization, which is also “a paradigm of the ministry of women in the Church!”
I hope to bring a
pilgrimage to this part of France someday. To learn, to explore and to know
more about this apostle to the apostle, but mostly to discover more about
myself as I learn to love. But for now,
I need to learn from her example to enter the tomb in search of Christ – even
when it is still dark. I need to learn of the love that persists
regardless of circumstance.
If you are
interested in exploring the idea of a pilgrimage in the footsteps of Mary
Magdalene in France, please contact me at Sharon@CatholicVineyard.com.
Check out this video of me from last year’s WINE summer book club taken while I was in Aix-en-Provence
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