Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene

 Lectionary: 603

Consequently, from now on we regard no one according to the flesh;
even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh,
yet now we know him so no longer.
So whoever is in Christ is a new creation:
the old things have passed away;
behold, new things have come.

"There's Jesus!" my three year old great nephew said, and my sister wondered what her grandson might have seen as they drove through Louisville. They made the same trip the next day and when he made the same remark she saw him point to a statue of a Shriner holding a child with one arm and the child's small crutch with his free hand. The boy has seen statues only in church and apparently supposes that all statues represent Jesus. 

In fact, he's not far wrong for the statue represents a compassionate man engaged in assisting a disabled child. And who can say what the Risen Lord should look like? The story of Saint Mary Magdalene gives us another image of Jesus. 

This woman disciple has fascinated artists, who tend to be both imaginative and passionate, for many centuries. She represents a human desire which might impel one's base nature into sin or one's spiritual nature into wonder. A sexualizing culture like ours would skew her love for Jesus and as if she sang, "He's a man / he's just a man / And I've had so many men before / In very many ways / He's just one more." (Jesus Christ Superstar)

After these many centuries, the Church attempts to right the wrong done to her, and to all women, We celebrate the Magdalene as disciple and apostle of the Lord. We know little about her, and speculation on that little is often fruitless. Magdala was not a Jewish town and this Jewish woman must have known the sad experience of minority women. Saint Luke (8:2) describes her as a woman relieved of seven demons. She appears as a spokesperson for the women disciples, as Peter was for the men. She is alone with the Lord only in the Easter story of his appearance to her. 

Sadly, it seems to me, that mysterious, wonderful, evocative story has been flattened by many two-dimensional pictures and a misreading of his remark, "Do not cling to me." Jesus appears to shun and rebuke the woman despite his coming to her in solitude. Why would he come to her at all if he must immediately avoid her passionate embrace? 

I prefer to think that he did accept her embrace in the same manner that he might have sat silently with the Samaritan woman in the same Gospel of Saint John. That first moment of bliss at the well was interrupted by the disciples' return with provisions; this moment is broken as the Lord must go to the Father and she must go tell the disciples. In both stories the women are remarkably successful missionaries. 

Nolo me tangere means, "Do not touch (or cling) to me." As a word of the Gospel, it reminds us that our encounter with the Lord -- in prayer, sacraments, and personal meditation -- is not a solitary gift for the isolated person. We must bring our passion, desire, and delight to the Church and then to the world. We must dare to let others see our joy in knowing, loving, and serving him. The secret should be proclaimed from the roof tops. 

More importantly, we must regard no one according to the flesh, as Saint Paul says. To sexualize or eroticise anyone is an abominable sin. The Christian must see every human being as a likeness of God who "made them male and female, in his own image." And every Christian must know a fellow Christian as a brother or sister in the Lord. Any violation of that reverence for others -- in marriage or anywhere else -- is incestuous. The vocation of celibacy, given to some, serves as a visible, forceful reminder to everyone that our relations must be chaste. 

In an age of much sexual confusion, when some people suppose they can choose their sexual preference and identity, the Church announces that men and women loved the Lord, each in their own way, and in a way appropriate to chastity. If he loved them all equally -- whatever that means -- he also regarded each one separately. 

In 2016, the memorial of Saint Mary Magdalene was elevated to a feast; she is celebrated like an apostle. She is no longer conflated with Mary of Bethany or the Samaritan woman; rather she is recognized as a significant disciple who played a leading role among the witnesses of his resurrection. We hope that this new appreciation of her can atone for twenty centuries of suspicion.