Again, is this a point of salvation, or a beautiful story of service and love?
My daughter chose her as a Confirmation Patron because of her example.
Not because of anything else. People have always been arguing about Mary Magdalene.
Seems the various “Mary’s” in the Bible confound people.
I’m not sure why.
There’s a long history of people (not just Popes, though Gregory probably confounded the issue) confusing lots of Marys (Maries?). Origen (c. 185-254AD) and St John Chrysostom (317-407), who both lived generations before Gregory, both explicitly say that Mary Magdalene was “unsuitable” as a first witness to the Resurrection, so part of the false legend about her was presumably around even by then. There’s also a long history of
Interestingly, a Renaissance-era Biblical scholar, Jacques Lefévre d’Etaples, published a treatise on her in 1517, critiquing the then-common view of her as a reformed prostitute…for his trouble, he was censured, expelled from his university (La Sorbonne), and his work was added to the Vatican’s list of prohibited books. So I’d not blame Pope Gregory alone!
Pope Gregory, working with then-current historical assumptions, may have got it wrong (and many after him). She wasn’t a prostitute (she was a “woman of means” if you read Luke 8 and a woman need not be a prostitute to have money!).
But to digress a little bit, I would also be very wary of over-deconstructing her prostitute-legend (partly because she has long been a very important saint
for prostitutes and repentant sinners in general). Her legend gave rise to (often, infamously, rather misguided) efforts to help prostitutes. And nor should we seek a theological respectability for her by giving her a more “palatable” story.
We also must not ignore the fact that a prostitute or otherwise ‘fallen’ woman absolutely could have been a prominent figure, even a leader, in Jesus’ movement. Of the “many others” we read about in the first verses of Luke 8 (when we first read of Mary Magdalene), were some of them actually prostitutes? I imagine, very probably yes. Jesus was nice to everyone, loved and loves everyone. We can but hope that so too were the women in His movement which became our Church, which was a movement of inclusiveness and equality.
but, Clare, you are absolutely right. I don’t think it matters what the “facts” of Mary Magdalene are. Her story is a beautiful one.
What I intended to be a five-line response has become a little essay, so I beg anyone who reads this indulge me a little more…
A few months I read a book called
The Female Face of God at Auschwitz by Melissa Raphael. She suggests, that rather than thinking about an omnipotent but absent God (“why did He allow such awful things?”), we instead see the face of God in the women who cared for the children, each other, and the dying;
Building on what Clare says about her story - I like to think of Mary Magdalene at the foot of the Cross, and again at the tomb, as the face of God. And we shouldn’t forget all the other women too whom Jesus definitely did know, and love. Because some of them, or all of them, just like all the men, were sinful or fallen and who He picked up with love.
I mean to say, regardless of the background of the historical Mary of Magdala, we could do very much worse than to emulate her, and hope too for the same love from Christ.
