Was Mary, Lazarus' sis, a woman of ill repute?

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that’s what the pastor of the local parish told us last week. he said that she had done that until ‘her conversion to Jesus’. i was flabbergasted, having never heard anyone make such an accusation before. i was tempted to interupt the sermon to ask how he knew that since he never offered his source.
in fact, i was really tempted since he also told us that Sarah wasn’t really in her 80s when Daddy stopped by and told Abraham that she’d have a kid. his explanation was that she was really only 35-40, but in the storytelling fashion of the day, they would say she was 80 to emphsize her elderlyness.
i didn’t stick around to ask where his information came from, so i dont know to look for a confirmation. for instance, if he’d said, ‘like we learn in the gospels’ or ‘as we learn from early commentators’, i’d have a place to go and look. instead, he just said, ‘do you know what Mary had been earlier in life?..a prostitute!’
so, has anyone else heard this nasty story about Mary before and do you know where it comes from?
 
Funky Cedars:
that’s what the pastor of the local parish told us last week. he said that she had done that until ‘her conversion to Jesus’. i was flabbergasted, having never heard anyone make such an accusation before. i was tempted to interupt the sermon to ask how he knew that since he never offered his source.
in fact, i was really tempted since he also told us that Sarah wasn’t really in her 80s when Daddy stopped by and told Abraham that she’d have a kid. his explanation was that she was really only 35-40, but in the storytelling fashion of the day, they would say she was 80 to emphsize her elderlyness.
i didn’t stick around to ask where his information came from, so i dont know to look for a confirmation. for instance, if he’d said, ‘like we learn in the gospels’ or ‘as we learn from early commentators’, i’d have a place to go and look. instead, he just said, ‘do you know what Mary had been earlier in life?..a prostitute!’
so, has anyone else heard this nasty story about Mary before and do you know where it comes from?
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The assertion about Sarah is pure modernist spin: the attempt to downplay the supernatural element in Bible stories is a symptom of an increasingly discredited over-reliance on the historical critical method of Bible interpretation that became popular among Catholic “scholars” in the '60’s (after Protestant scholars, for the most part, abandoned it).

As far as Mary Magdelene goes, aside from the dopey theories you find in such laughers like The Da Vinci Code, there have been differing schools of thought about her history among orthodox Bible exegetes through the centuries. Here’s a recent article from Catholic Exchange:

catholicexchange.com/vm/index.asp?vm_id=6&art_id=24646
 
Sarah… As I recall, human life at that time was much more extended at that time than it is now. Abraham, for instance, died at the age of about 175. So, let’s assume 175 of the time is like 115 now (close to the extreme limit of age) of our time. Since he was 100 when Isaac was born - that would put him in today’s standards at about 65, and Sarah would be in her sixties - still far beyond her childbearing years and still making Isaac a miracle baby. Does this make any sense?
 
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Fidelis:
…As far as Mary Magdelene goes,…
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but mary mag wasn’t laz’ sister, as i understand it. am i wrong? fr was talking about laz’ sister, in the context of the ‘martha, martha’ gosple reading. all i remember about this mary was the exchange when J came after laz died, m:“yes, i believe in the resurection.” J:“I AM the resurrection.” but no one ever told me that she’d been naughty.
thank for listening, love and peace, terry
 
We do not know the answer.

It is possible that Mary, sister of Lazarus, was also known as Mary Magdalene (meaning Mary of Magda, a city at that time). It is possible that she was not.
 
Mary, Martha & Lazarius were from Bethany which is near Jerusalem, not Magdala, which is near the sea of Galilee. Luke 7:36-50 tells the story of a woman who is a “sinner” who anoints the feet of Jesus while he dined at the home of a pharisee. Luke does not identify the woman but John says in chapt. 11 v. 2 "And it was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.

Vicky
 
Funky Cedars:
but mary mag wasn’t laz’ sister, as i understand it. am i wrong? fr was talking about laz’ sister, in the context of the ‘martha, martha’ gosple reading. all i remember about this mary was the exchange when J came after laz died, m:“yes, i believe in the resurection.” J:“I AM the resurrection.” but no one ever told me that she’d been naughty.
thank for listening, love and peace, terry
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Mary, Martha & Lazarius were from Bethany which is near Jerusalem, not Magdala, which is near the sea of Galilee. Luke 7:36-50 tells the story of a woman who is a “sinner” who anoints the feet of Jesus while he dined at the home of a pharisee. Luke does not identify the woman but John says in chapt. 11 v. 2 "And it was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.
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The article above addresses this issue in an interesting way.

For the record, I personally believe that Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany were not the same person. But the article gives a very interesting line of thinking.
 
Your priest was perpetuating some of the odd legends that have popped up through the years. Tell him that if you’re to believe all that, then he also has to preach that Mary Magdalene was secretly married to Jesus and that she was wisked off to Provence with their children where she founded the Christian Church in France which founded the bloodline of Charlemagne, substantiating his claims to becoming Holy Roman Emperor. And if he’s going to teach all of that, then he also has to preach that she went to a mountaintop in the Pyranees and became a hermit late in life.

If he’s willing to preach any of that from the pulpit…which all has as much credibility as the stuff that he did preach, then you can ask his bishop or Order to help him find a good retirement house somewhere in northern Italy.
 
No way to tell. There were a lot of Marys in the equivalent of what they had to a phone book in those days.
 
Funky Cedars:
i didn’t stick around to ask where his information came from, so i dont know to look for a confirmation. for instance, if he’d said, ‘like we learn in the gospels’ or ‘as we learn from early commentators’, i’d have a place to go and look. instead, he just said, ‘do you know what Mary had been earlier in life?..a prostitute!’
so, has anyone else heard this nasty story about Mary before and do you know where it comes from?
Click to expand...
This is a reflection I had to write on this subject once…

In the Gospel of Luke (7:36-50) the “sinful woman’s who washed Jesus’ feet name is never mentioned. However, in the very next chapter Luke (8: 2) Mary Magdalene’s name is mentioned with the women who served, some who had been cured of evil spirits and maladies. With regards to Mary Magdalene, it mentions that seven devils went out of her, not that she was a prostitute. If we take these two accounts and put them side-by-side, we begin to see how the identification of Mary Magdalene as the sinful woman began. Paralleling of stories was a way of reading Scripture that has been very popular, off and on, throughout Christian history which takes accounts of similar stories as one and the same, that is, to read them as narratives of the same event but often providing different details. This approach is one we are all familiar with from Hollywood. Most movies that claim to be giving the life of Jesus, rather than giving a view exclusively from one Gospel, give a composite view, with some artistic license as well. This is seen most recently in the movie “ The Passion”, when Mary Magdalene is at the feet of Jesus at the cross and is recalling when she first met him in the story of “The Adulteress” in John chpt.( 8: 4-11), clearly this is not Mary Magdalene.

Regardless of what Mary was before her conversion, it does in no way discredit her after her conversion. Indeed the greater sinner she would have been before she met Jesus, the more she would have been the source of confidence in the power of the grace of Jesus to draw all people, even those involved in the most sinful of lifestyles, to Himself. If she had been a prostitute before meeting Jesus and he converted her from that, then she would have been a sign of the power of Jesus and a sign of hope to all people who were involved in sinful lifestyles or who loved somebody involved in sinful lifestyles. Indeed, throughout history that is the role she played in popular piety, nobody should be given up on because even Mary Magdalene could be converted and become an important figure in the Gospels.
Annunciata:)
 
perhaps Mary the sister of Lazarus and Martha, or Mary Magdelene, or Mary of Bethany or any of the other women named in the new testament was also the woman taken in adultery and/or the woman who anointed Jesus feet and wept tears of repentence and/or was a woman of ill repute who was forgiven of her past sins by Jesus and became one of his devoted followers and/or witness to the resurreciton. Why should anybody be shocked by this, or consider it an accusation? Jesus forgave her, why should anybody have a problem with it?
 
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