Mary Magdalene is a much abused woman these days. Dan Brown, author of that best selling airport-paper back Da Vinci Code made her a feminist wife for Jesus Christ, because evidently Dan Brown does not know what else a woman can be.
The historical records indicate that she was a wealthy woman, a follower and supporter of Jesus, and that she was one of the first eye witnesses of his victory over death. In the West, she has sometimes been associated with the “sinful woman’ who anointed Jesus’ feet, but in the East this association was not made.
She was not Jesus’ wife, not because it is bad to be a wife, but because Jesus was on a mission (like Saint Paul) that would have made it selfish to have a wife. If you know you were born to die at a young age for the sins of humanity, you might avoid putting that burden on a spouse as well.
Mary Magdalen was something just as good and profound in its own way. She was a friend and disciple of Jesus. She was a woman who loved a man without wanting to marry Him. That is hard for our culture which pretends two things which are equally false.
First, it imagines that men and women are the same . . . or at least they can be functionally the same. They don’t recognize that the distinction is soul-deep. Men and women need each other, but cannot be each other.
Modern people mutter, “If Mary Magdalene was a powerful woman, then she must really have been an apostle!” She must have been a friend to Jesus just like Peter was His friend. Did the early church just suppress this role? They cannot imagine a friendship that is different and delighted in the difference between man and woman.
Like Saint Nina whose title is “Equal to the Apostles,” Saint Mary could be equal in importance to the apostles without ever wanting to be one. She could be wise and virtuous and powerful, but as a woman. Jesus (who was after all a man) could relate to her as a woman. Our culture wants to flatten out these friendships or pretend that they don’t exist.
Weirdly, this first myth of the moderns about men and women has led to a widespread second myth. This myth places all relationships in the context of married life . . . and leaves nothing for friendship or other types of bonding between human beings. If the Middle Ages was too apt to exalt friendship and view marriage as a social contract for making babies (Anathema!), then we are too apt to put our emotional hope in marriage or romantic love.
Most men in our culture don’t have male friends, let alone female friends. They can imagine dying for a lover, but the type of love that David had for Jonathan is unthinkable. Everything has been sexualized! It is time to recover the importance of friendship. Women should rejoice in the sisterhood and also in the different sort of friendship available between godly men and women.
If Mary was the “sinful woman” of Western legend, then she must have been greatly relieved (though perhaps not a little confused) by a Man who could love her as a woman without wanting to marry her.
The otherwise forgettable Musical Jesus Christ, Superstar has Mary sing:
I don’t know how to love him.
What to do, how to move him.
I’ve been changed, yes really changed.
In these past few days, when I’ve seen myself,
I seem like someone else.
I don’t know how to take this.
I don’t see why he moves me.
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.
Should I bring him down?
Should I scream and shout?
Should I speak of love,
Let my feelings out?
I never thought I’d come to this.
If she was confused when she first met Him (as the song suggests), by the time of his Passion and Holy Death she was confused no longer. Mary Magdalene followed Jesus when all the men but John were gone. She had, in all probability, helped pay for the travels of this wondering rabbi and supported Him in His difficult task.
She was there to bury His body when He died. It was no wonder that God vouchsafed to give her a Vision of the Risen Lord and the Empty Tomb before all the others. Jesus loved her and wanted to honor her. In a culture where a woman’s testimony was not valued as much as a man’s, He was willing to make her one of the chief witnesses of His death. She knew how to love Him and He knew how to love her.
All over the world there are women loving Him as women. They do not know Him as a worldly lover, but as a Lord who loves them. They have a friendship with Him different than any I can experience . . . mysterious to me, but powerful and strong. Christian women do not come unsexed, but as they are. They come in the fullness of their experiences and Jesus Christ loves them.
He does not ask these holy Women (who would not call themselves holy!) to change. He allows for their strength and accepts their service. He seeks their wisdom and shows them Himself so they can proclaim His truth. He does not make them fathers, but mothers. He does not make them holy brothers, but holy sisters.
His relationships are varied and splendid . . . individualized beyond even gender. He loved Mary Magdalene in a way that He will never love you or me. The loves of the God-Man are staggering in their uniqueness. But this is true of all the loves of Jesus-Christ, they bring a person to wholeness. They make a man or a woman a saint . . . but all saints are the most themselves at the moment of their supreme sanctity. No two callings are alike . . . and in this way they are alike.
Mary Magdalene loved Jesus and became a powerful witness in the Church to the world.
Saint Mary Magdalene learned how to love Him and her example calls me today to love Him too.
