THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED

Saint Mary Magdalene enters the Gospel by the narrow gate of repentance and humility of heart. It is Saint Luke who first speaks, in the seventh chapter of his Gospel, of a “woman,” without specifying her name, “who was a sinner in the town” (7, 37.) He does not name the town either. It was certainly a town of Galilee, since Jesus was then preaching in Capharnaum (Lk. 7, 1,) and at Naim (7, 11.)

THE CONVERSION

THE DINNER AT THE HOUSE OF SIMON THE PHARISEE. Charles Le Brun (1619-1690), detail.
“What must we see in this, if not the immense mercy of our Creator, who gives us as examples of penance those whom He brought back to life through penance after their falls?…Look at Peter, you whose faith has perhaps failed: he wept bitterly over the cowardice of his denial… Look at Mary, you who, consumed by the fire of evil desire, have lost the purity of the flesh: she burned up the carnal love within herself by the fire of divine love.” (Saint Gregory the Great)

A Pharisee named Simon had invited Jesus to his table, doubtless to question Him about His teaching and His behaviour, which was giving scandal “in the town.” Had He not said, “John the Baptist came, neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say: ‘He is possessed!’ The Son of Man has come, eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of publicans and sinners!’ Yet Wisdom has been justified by all her children (Lk. 7, 33-35)?”

According to the Jewish custom of the time, there were no women at the table around which the guests were reclining. Suddenly, “a woman” burst in; it would become an occasion for the revelation of hearts.

“Having learned that he was dining at the house of a Pharisee, she had brought a vase of ointment. Placing herself behind Him, at His feet, weeping, she began to sprinkle His feet with her tears and dry them with her hair. She covered them with kisses and anointed them with ointment.” (7, 37-38)

“How lovely they are on the mountains, the feet of the messenger who announces peace, the messenger of the good news that heralds salvation, who says to Sion : ‘Your God reigns.’ ” (Is. 52, 7) Jesus accepted these bold and surprisingly fervent gestures to the great scandal of the Pharisee, who blamed not so much the one who performed them as he did Him who welcomed them so kindly: “If this man were a prophet, he would know who this woman who touches Him is and what she is: a sinner!”

Jesus, however, said to him:

“Simon, I have something to say to you.” 

“Speak, Master,” he answered.

“A creditor had two debtors, one who owed him five hundred deniers and the other fifty. As they had no means of repaying him, he forgave the debts of both. Which of them will love him more for it?”

Simon answered, “He to whom more was forgiven, I suppose.”

He told him, “You have judged rightly.”

It was easy, and the Pharisee, puffed up with his “reasonable” justice, thought he had got off lightly. But Jesus continued:

 “Do you see this woman? I came into your house and you did not pour water upon My feet; she, on the other hand, has bathed them with her tears and dried them with her hair. You did not give Me a kiss; ever since I came in, however, she has been covering My feet with kisses. You poured no oil upon My head; she, however, has poured ointment upon My feet.”

The play on “you” and “she” vividly marks the great division among souls: between those who believe themselves “just,” and cannot be so in the eyes of God because they are without love, modesty, contrition, or taste for true holiness, and those who, recognising that they are sinners, implore pardon.

“Because of this I tell you that her sins, her numerous sins, are forgiven her because she has shown much love.”

One would expect, in line with the parable, “This is why, in the measure that her sins are forgiven her, she will love much,” but no, Jesus brilliantly reverses things, as in the parable of the Good Samaritan (cf. Lk. 10, 29-37.) This woman began by loving, because she knew herself to be loved as the object of grace and mercy, and manifested in her repentance such a love that she obtained forgiveness of her sins. “The rust of sin,” said Saint Gregory, “is all the better consumed when the sinner’s heart burns with the great fire of charity.”

“But he to whom little is forgiven shows less love.” There it is a question of the Pharisee and those like him who imagine that they have “little” that needs to be pardoned. “I have not come to call the just, but sinners,” said the Lord Jesus (Mk. 2, 17.) They, responding to the call, went away justified, while those who claimed to be “just” remained in their sin.

Turning again toward the woman, Jesus said to her with a supreme simplicity, “Your sins are forgiven.” This was the operative word. Whatever Simon and his Pharisee guests thought of it, they were certain of one thing: a man cannot pardon sins. Mary Magdalene knew it very well too, but she had already understood that Jesus was more than a man. He was the One sent by God, God Himself.

“Go in peace; your faith has saved you,” Jesus said to her. Whence came this faith? What had Christ done to elicit in her such faith in Him? To understand these words, we must suppose that the Saviour had already done something for her. “It was even, perhaps, to thank Him for this immense benefit that she had felt moved to come and find Him.” (Feuillet, p. 289.) What benefit? The following pericope will tell us.

There is here, then, not ‘stage dressing’ invented after the fact in order to illustrate the parable of the two debtors, as modern exegetes (Bultmann, Boismard, etc. cited by Feuillet) would have it, but a true parable in action, representing the return of the lost sheep and the faithless spouse, a figure of the return of sinful humanity to its Good Shepherd, its true Spouse, sent by the Father “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt. 15, 24.)

FOLLOWING CHRIST

In the following chapter, Saint Luke evokes the group of holy women who followed Our Lord in his apostolic journeys.

“After this He travelled through towns and villages, preaching and proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom of God. The Twelve were with Him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and ailments: Mary, called the Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, Joanna, wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, Susanna, and several others who provided for them from their own resources.” (Lk. 8, 1-3.)

Between Mary of Magdala and the converted sinner of the preceding verses, there cannot be the least connection, affirm the modern exegetes, echoed by a note in The Jerusalem Bible. Why would they say this? It seems evident that after her sensational conversion, the sinner known “in the town,” – and was this not Magdala, the city with a reputation for corruption on the shores of Lake Tiberias? – attached herself closely to Him who had delivered her from “seven demons.”

It is true that being “possessed” does not necessarily signify being in a “state of sin.” “Nothing, however, prevents us from identifying Mary Magdalene, liberated from seven demons, with the woman of evil repute, of whom Luke 7, 36-50 attests the repentance and conversion,” Feuillet writes. “We can go further. It is well known that the evil powers push men to all the forms of vice and sin.”

He then brings up the case of the “impure spirit” leaving a man but resolved not to let go of him and returning, accompanied by seven other spirits more wicked than himself. (cf. Mt. 12, 43-45.) “Thus it will also be with this evil generation,” Jesus proclaimed. “He certainly put the devil to flight, but only for a time because the dispositions of His compatriots were not good and their situation after the coming of Jesus could be worse than before.” (Feuillet, p. 387.)

It was not the same for Mary of Magdala, whom the Lord delivered permanently from the influence of the evil spirit. From that day, she attached herself to the Master and followed Him to the end, joining the women who carried out, for the Lord and His disciples, the tasks that only women know how to perform. Their zeal, devotion, and self-effacement pleased the Master, because they recalled to Him the example of His Mother.

Why did Saint Luke not establish a more explicit connection between the two women? Perhaps he did not wish to dishonour Mary Magdalene, who had become so illustrious in the primitive community, or else he did not want to shock some readers who might be scandalised to see the former sinner so quickly admitted to the company of Jesus.

THE “BETTER PART”

Continuing our cursory reading of Saint Luke, we encounter a third woman whom the Lord seems to distinguish; would it be the same one? This time her name is revealed: it is Mary, sister of Martha.

“As they were travelling, He entered a village,” [which one? We do not know; it seems from the account of Saint Luke that Jesus and His Apostles were again in Galilee] “and a woman named Martha received Him into her house. She had a sister named Mary who, sitting at the feet of the Lord, was listening to His words.” (Lk. 10, 38-39.)

“In his longed-for shade I am seated, and his fruit is sweet to my taste. He has taken me to his wine cellar and the banner he raises over me is love,” says the Beloved of the Song of Songs (Sg. 2, 3-4.) We often find the sister of Martha in this attitude of contemplative love, but already the converted sinner had been behind Jesus, “at His feet.” Mary Magdalene would throw herself there on the morning of the Resurrection; is it not one and the same woman?

It is probable, and very “fitting,” that after her conversion and her radical change of life, she who had made herself known at Magdala by her indiscretions had been reintroduced into the family circle as a the prodigal child, whose parable Saint Luke reports further on. “It was certainly right to celebrate and rejoice, because your brother [your sister] here was dead and he [she] has come back to life.” (Lk. 15, 32.)

“Martha was absorbed by the many cares of serving. Intervening, she said: ‘Lord, is it nothing to you that my sister is leaving me to do the serving all alone? Tell her then to help me.”

“But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you worry and fret about many things and yet few are needed, indeed only one. It is Mary who has chosen the better part; it is not to be taken from her.’”

The teaching of the Master is clear, and yet mysterious. One thing only is necessary, unum necessarium: to nourish oneself with every word that comes out of the mouth of God, consequently from His own mouth. He had already said it to the Jews of Capharnaum: “Do not work for perishable food, but for that which endures into eternal life, that which the Son of Man will give you, for it is He whom the Father has marked with His seal.” (Jn. 6, 27.)

Mary chose “the better part,” the “heritage” of which the Psalmist speaks: “You have said to Yahweh: ‘My Lord are you. My happiness cannot exist apart from you…Yahweh is my allotted portion and my cup.” (Ps. 16 [15], 2, 5; new translation in He is Risen n° 61) She left everything to follow Jesus everywhere that He would go. Her sister Martha, though, did not (yet) leave everything. While she remained in “her” house, where she received the Master with generosity; as a just and upright worker, religious and faithful to the Commandments, there was yet something else lacking in her: “Go, sell all that you have, distribute it to the poor, and you will have treasure in Heaven; then come and follow Me.” (Mt. 19, 21.)

In following Saint Luke, we have established the plausible and fitting connections among the three women whom he presents under three aspects, at three different moments. We must now have recourse to the other Synoptics but above all to Saint John, the eyewitness and confident of the intimate thoughts of the Master, to find out if there was only one woman or if there were several.

THE RESURRECTION OF LAZARUS

The death and resurrection of Lazarus are, as it were, the dress rehearsal for those of the Lord Jesus, who willed this dramatic staging in order to test the faith of His disciples and strengthen it with a view to His Passion, which was then near at hand: “Lazarus is dead, and I rejoice for you that I was not there, so that you might believe.” (Jn. 11, 14-15.)

“There was a sick man, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was she who anointed the Lord with ointment and dried His feet with her hair; it was her brother who was sick.” (Jn. 11, 1-2.)

Thus we learn from Saint John that Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, from Bethany like them, is the very woman “who anointed the Lord with ointment and dried His feet with her hair,” of whom Saint Luke wrote. That was an event of the past. We have here what exegetes call a “linkage” between Saint Luke and Saint John, in favour of the identification of the sister of Lazarus with the converted sinner.

It is not impossible, adds Feuillet, that it was Saint John who reported the conversion episode to Saint Luke. The latter wrote in his Prologue: “As those who were from the beginning eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word have transmitted to us,” (1, 2) his manner of designating the Apostle John. Feuillet puts forward an interesting hypothesis: “Just as John gave Luke the particular information that he possessed about the infancy of Jesus and numerous details of the Passion and the paschal apparitions, so it was from John that Luke must have obtained what he knew of Martha and Mary, the two sisters of Lazarus. What he tells us of them in 10, 38-42 corresponds perfectly to the portrait drawn for us of each of them in chapters 11 and 12 of the fourth Gospel. Does not Saint Luke’s account of the sinful woman have its origin in St. John?” (p. 376.)

There is something else mentioned by Saint John that reveals what the other Synoptics preferred to leave in shadow: “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister, and Lazarus.” It is rare that the Gospel thus reveals to us the secrets of the Heart of Jesus. “There are beings whom He met,” our Father explains, “and whom, at a glance, He loved with a particular love. It is a fact that discretion generally covers with a certain silence, but there is in the Gospel the revelation of this very tender, very affectionate Heart of Jesus. It aroused profound love, called mystical love because of its simultaneous purity and intensity.” (Sermon of 24 March 1985.)

Jesus waited two days before going to Bethany. When He arrived, His friend Lazarus was dead and Martha was the first to go to meet the Master, “While Mary remained sitting in the house.”Soon, however, Jesus asked for her. Rising in haste, Mary ran toward Him and, “seeing Him, fell at His feet and said to Him: ‘Lord, if you had been here my brother would not be dead!’” (Jn. 11, 32.) With Martha, He had had to reason, but Jesus only had to see Mary weeping at His feet to “tremble in spirit and be troubled,” and ask to be taken to the tomb, in order to produce the resurrection of the beloved brother.

“The Master is there and is calling you.” Jesus had called Mary to Himself. She would no longer leave Him “until the end.” After the miracle, her faith in “her” Jesus was unshakeable, stronger than death. Intelligent, admirably instructed in the mysteries through so many hours spent at the feet of the Master, she would be one of the first to foresee the Hour of sacrifice and, entering without reticence into the perspective of the beloved Lord, anticipate it.

THE ANOINTING AT BETHANY

THE ANOINTING AT BETHANY. Window of Notre-Dame de Chartres. (PHOTO HENRI GAUD)
“If we accomplish good works, which fill the Church with a sweet odour by making her well spoken of, what else are we doing but pouring ointment on the Body of the Lord?” (Saint Gregory the Great)

This occurred “two days before the Pasch,” according to Saint Mark (14, 1) and Saint Matthew (26, 2,) “six days before the Pasch,” according to Saint John. Whom to believe? It is necessary to know of the existence of two calendars; the ancient one, that of the “traditionalists” of Galilee, and the new one, the official one followed at the Temple of Jerusalem, in order to reconcile the three Gospels (cf. Brother Bruno, Jesus Christ, Universal Saviour, (He is Risen, n° 66, March 2008)

The high priests and the scribes were plotting already, seeking to “arrest Jesus by trickery and to kill Him.” During this time, Jesus was at Bethany as the guest of Simon the leper, doubtless one of those whom He had cured. Martha took part in the serving, as was customary, and Lazarus, her brother, was among the guests. Then Mary entered the banquet room:

“Taking a pound of ointment of pure spikenard, of great value, she anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped them with her hair; and the house was filled with the scent of the ointment.”(Jn. 12, 3.)

THE SAME GESTURE

“Without being confused with the anointing by the sinful woman in Saint Luke, the anointing at Bethany,” writes Feuillet, “invincibly evokes it: in each case, the woman does the same thing: she anoints the feet of Jesus with ointment; she uses her hair to dry them,” which are both extraordinary gestures (375.) The same vocabulary is found in John 12, 3 and Luke 7, 38: alephein (anoint,) muron (ointment,) ekmassein (dry.)

There is this difference: in the first anointing, she first wiped the feet that she had bathed in tears and afterward anointed them with ointment. At Bethany, on the other hand, she anointed them directly with her ointment, and then dried them with her loose hair. This is a strange gesture that Father Lagrange, who wanted to distinguish the two women, could not explain: “It must be recognised that Mary’s act is not very natural…after all, Mary could have thought of protecting the rugs and the cushions.”

Father Feuillet smiles at this: “Few persons, I think, would be convinced by this last explanation. Is it likely that the sublime and completely unusual gesture of Mary using her hair to wipe the feet of Jesus was only due to fear of soiling the rugs? The commentary of Lagrange is an undisguised avowal of defeat. The anointing at Bethany, as John recounts it, is in itself incomprehensible; it only becomes intelligible in relation to a previous event, the one that Luke 7 describes.”

Saint Augustine had already understood it: “It is the same Mary who made the same gesture twice.”

A ROYAL ANOINTING

She did not, however, content herself with renewing, in a stunning manner, the gesture of her conversion; she added something which Saint Mark and Saint Matthew report: 

“When Jesus was at Bethany, at the house of Simon the leper, while He was at table a woman came with an alabaster jar containing pure spikenard of great value. Breaking the jar, she poured it over His head.” (Mk. 14, 3.)

The two anointings must have taken place successively, the first “on the feet” and the second “on the head.” This was a rite of consecration, like that given by the prophet Samuel to King David, (1 S. 16, 13) or by the priest Zadok to King Solomon (1 K. 1, 39.) Mary wished to consecrate “her” Lord, on the eve of His messianic entry into Jerusalem and His sorrowful Passion.

“Fracto alabastro.” Saint Mark is the only one to note this detail. Mary broke the neck of the jar of ointment. This is, our Father explains, the image of her heart that was breaking, sensing the drama that was approaching: “Moved by the Holy Sprit, she sees, she feels, she trembles at the thought of the Heart of Jesus, this Heart that is still beating, full of generous Blood; but she sees it as already broken, already pierced, and all that Blood that will soon flow. She knows that the enemies are there, she knows them with a lucidity analogous to that of Saint John… She cannot restrain herself; she also wants all the blood of her heart to gush out of her too. She wants to give all the love of her heart and she finds this symbolic means, this vase: she breaks it.”

THE SCANDAL OF JUDAS

Judas evidently understood nothing and was scandalised at this gesture: “What good is the waste of this ointment? This ointment could have been sold for three hundred deniers that could have been given to the poor!”

In this connection, Feuillet notes astutely, “According to Luke 8, 2-3, Mary Magdalene was part of a group of women who followed Jesus and the Twelve in their travels and ‘assisted them with their resources.’ The three accounts of the anointing at Bethany, however, allow us to suppose as self-evident that if the ointment had been sold by Mary to benefit the poor, the proceeds from this sale would have been automatically put at the disposal of Jesus, and thus given to Judas, who had been given custody of the common funds.” Let us note this new connection between Mary of Magdala and Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus.

Saint John immediately adds, concerning Judas, “He did not say this out of concern for the poor, but because he was a thief, and because, holding the purse, he used to steal what was put into it.” (Jn. 12, 6.)

Jesus defended Mary Magdalene, acquiescing in the service she was rendering him, as He had justified the repentant woman before the Pharisee and again Mary, when she was blamed indirectly by her sister Martha:

“It is a good work that she has done for Me. The poor you will always have with you, and whenever you wish you can do them good, but you will not always have Me. She has done what was in her power to do: she has anointed My Body beforehand for burial.”

WITH A VIEW TO THE BURIAL

The Lord here revealed the prophetic significance of Mary’s gesture: she had kept this ointment for Him, because she knew that He would be buried. It was necessary, in fact, for the Messiah to give His life for the remission of sins and fall into the earth like a grain of wheat, in order to bear fruit. From then on, how is it possible to conceive that Mary (of Bethany) is not Mary (of Magdala,) of the group of women who would come to the tomb of the Lord in the morning of the third day?

“The poor you will always have with you.” The saints, the faithful souls, will hear this appeal throughout the centuries and imitate Mary Magdalene: “Wishing to join Jesus in His Passion,” our Father explains, “they have sought other bodies to be for them substitutes for the Body of Christ, on which they can bestow the same gestures, the same manifestations of tenderness, devotion, solicitude; they have poured into the hospitals to care for the sick, the poor, the prisoners; and in their vehement love, they have kissed their sores.” (Sermon of 24 March 1985.)

Our Lord concluded solemnly: 

Wherever the Gospel is proclaimed, throughout the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of this woman.”(Mk. 14, 9.)

In her Eucharistic cult for the Body of her Lord, the Church will commemorate this anointing throughout the centuries, thus fulfilling the prophecy. Before giving His Body as food for His Apostles, Jesus wished to wash their feet, in order to unite them to His sacrifice. How can we not see in this “slave’s service” a response to Mary Magdalene’s gesture of humble love?

For the partisans of the “three Marys,” there is no question later on in the Gospel of the one they call “Mary of Bethany.” “But then,” asks Brother Decouvoux, “after the messianic anointing of Jesus at Bethany, does this great friend disappear for good?One must really have a bizarre conception of friendship to accept without question that the female disciple whom Jesus loved, the privileged one of His Heart, did not lift a finger – that she was absent both at Golgotha and at the tomb.” (Cahier de la Sainte Baume no 1, 1987, p. 13.)

AT THE FOOT OF THE CROSS

In fact, how can we conceive that Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus, who came to perform such a gesture on the Body of Jesus and who had received such praise from the Master, is not Mary of Magdala, faithful in following the Lord from Galilee, of whom the Evangelists say that she stood at the foot of the Cross beside the Mother of Jesus and Saint John?

All the Evangelists report it. Saint John is the most explicit: “Near the cross of Jesus stood His mother and His mother’s sister Mary, the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala”. (Jn. 19, 25.) They were there for the Hour of sacrifice, first at a distance and then, once they were allowed to pass the cordon of soldiers, at the very foot of the Cross. They forgot their own suffering and distress in order to be only presence, love, and compassion for the One who was dying in the death throes of His terrible struggle against the Prince of this world. It was the hour of perfect love.

Jesus willed to give everything, even to the last drop of His Blood, before His sacred Body, unfastened from the Cross, was placed in the tomb by Joseph of Arimathea, buried like a grain of wheat fallen into the soil: “If it dies, it bears much fruit.” (Jn. 12, 24.) Mary was there for the hour of the burial as Jesus had foretold, but she did not go into the sepulchre, in accordance with Jewish custom: “Now Mary of Magdala and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the sepulchre.” (Mt. 27, 61.) There could not be more qualified witnesses to report the sequel.

IN THE GARDEN OF THE RESURRECTION

“On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came early to the tomb, while it was still dark.” (Jn. 20, 1.) It seems that it was she who had brought the other women to the sepulchre, either to perform the final funerary services for the Lord, according to Saint Mark and Saint Luke, or to “visit the sepulchre” (Mt. 28, 1.) Saint John is content to say that Mary of Magdala “came to the tomb.” Had not the Lord said that He would rise on the third day?

Seeing that the stone had been rolled away, the women ran to alert the Apostles: “They have taken the Lord from the tomb and we do not know where they have put Him.” Peter and John went in haste to the sepulchre and saw the linen cloths lying on the ground and the Shroud “rolled up in a place by itself.” John “saw and believed” (Jn. 20, 8.) As for Peter, he returned to the Cenacle completely perplexed. Mary remained alone near the tomb, in tears.

“She was seeking Him whom she had not found,” writes Saint Gregory. “She wept while searching, glowing with the fire of her love, and she burned with desire for Him whom she believed taken away: ‘On my bed at night, I sought Him whom my heart loves; I sought and did not find Him. I will rise and go through the city; in the streets and the squares I will seek Him whom my heart loves. The watchmen who make their rounds in the city met me: Have you seen Him whom my heart loves?’”(Sg. 3, 1-3.)

Bending, she saw two angels, “sitting where the Body of Jesus had rested, one at the head and the other at the feet,” acting as the “watchmen of the city.” They said to her: “Woman, why are you weeping?

­–Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have put Him.”

“Scarcely had I passed them,” says the spouse of the Song of Songs, “than I found Him whom my heart loves. I held Him fast and I would not let Him go.” (Sg. 3, 4.) Seeing her in tears Jesus, the divine gardener, made Himself known by calling her by her name, as the Good Shepherd makes Himself known to his sheep by calling them by their names. (Jn. 10, 3):

“Mary!

–Rabboni”! This means “Master.”

JESUS APPEARS TO SAINT MARY MAGDALENE.
Window of Notre-Dame de Chartres. Photograph Henri Gaud.

She threw herself at His feet to embrace them. It is not Saint John but Saint Matthew who tells it, but he makes it seem as if the three women had met Christ, putting a plural instead of a singular; was it out of embarrassment? It was out of a sense of propriety also, and out of respect for the mystery of such astonishing familiarity from the risen Jesus! “And there Jesus came to meet them. ‘Greetings,’ He said. “And they approached Him and clasped His feet, falling down before Him.” (Mt. 28, 9.)

This was the promised joy. “I shall see you again. Then your sorrow shall be turned into joy, and that joy no one will be able to take from you”. (Jn. 16, 22.) After the Virgin Mary, as the Church has always believed, Mary Magdalen was the first to know this joy, in finding forever her Beloved, her “one thing necessary.”

Jesus then said to His confidant: “Stop touching Me, because I have not yet ascended to My Father. But go, find My brothers and tell them: I am ascending to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God.”

The traditional translation, “Do not touch me,” must be corrected, in the judgement of the best exegetes, to “Do not touch me any more,” or better, “Stop touching me.” Our Father has made a marvellous commentary on it. One could not explain the Saviour forbidding Mary Magdalene to touch Him, although He permitted the holy women to do so (Mt. 28, 9) and ordered Thomas to do so (Jn. 20, 27.) Evil unto him who evil thinks! Already the Pharisee had been scandalised that Jesus let Himself be “touched” by the repentant sinful woman, but was it not in order to make Himself seen and heard and touched that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us? As Saint John says at the beginning of his Epistle: “That which was from the beginning, that we have heard, that we have seen with our own eyes, that we have contemplated, that our hands have touched, of the Word of life.” (1 Jn. 1, 1.)

The hymn for the Matins of the Ascension chants in a striking epitome: “Peccat caro, mundat caro, regnat Deus Dei caro.” “The flesh [mortal] sins, the flesh [divine] purifies. God reigns through the flesh of God.”

Jesus thus makes His perfect disciple the first witness and messenger of His Resurrection to His Apostles. We know from Saint Luke that they did not believe her and treated her message as “drivel.” (Lk. 24, 11.) The Lord, however, reproached them for it: “Finally, He showed Himself to the Eleven while they were at table. He reproached them for their incredulity and obstinacy in not believing those who had seen Him after He had risen.” (Mk. 16, 14.)

IN THE HEART OF THE CHURCH

If the Gospels speak no further of Mary Magdalene, it is surely because she melted into the group of holy women who surrounded the Virgin and the Apostles, as Saint Luke reports: “All these with one mind continued steadfastly in prayer with several women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brethren.” (Ac. 1, 14.)

Within the primitive community, she would be known as “the one who had anointed the feet of the Lord and wiped them with her hair,” (Jn. 11, 2) as proof of her incomparable love. Finally, in the different episodes in which she appeared, “it is always the same burning love for Jesus that we find” (Feuillet,) and that creates the essential link between the converted sinner, the sister of Martha in contemplation at the feet of the Master, and Mary of Magdala who occupies such a large place in the Passion and Resurrection of the Lord.

SAINT MARY MAGDALENE WELCOMED INTO HEAVEN BY CHRIST.
Window of Notre-Dame de Chartres. Photograph Henri Gaud.

She who had “loved much” received as “the better part” the vocation of spreading the sweet odour of Christ “wherever the Gospel will be preached,” that is to say, throughout the whole world, as an absolutely necessary revelation of the love of Jesus Christ for all poor human beings, and of the exquisite love of the best of them for Him. Faith in this love has edified and must continue to edify the Church until the end of time. (To be continued.)

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