Mother Mary And Mary Magdalene
Mosaic in the church in Lourdes, from left to right: the apostle John, Mother Mary, Mary Magdalene embracing Jesus' feet, Mary the sister of Mother Mary.
Table of Contents:
Holding Two Marys Together
Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene are particularly close within the holy family that is the ‘communion of saints’ mentioned in the Creed. They were the two women Jesus was closest to in his life: his mother and possibly his closest disciple. Mary Magdalene’s special closeness to Jesus is expressed powerfully in the canonical gospels’ accounts of his resurrection. All four Gospels agree that she was among the first to witness the resurrection (and they don’t agree on very much). In John and Mark, Jesus appears first to her alone, in Matthew to her and one other woman, in Luke she is with a group of women and only hears about the resurrection from two angels, who show them the empty tomb. She is always named first when there are lists of women disciples.
In Matthew, Mark, and John she is sent to proclaim the good news to the other disciples. This is what makes her an “apóstolos”, the Greek term for "one who is sent out". At least as early as the 2nd century C.E., Mary Magdalene is therefore called ‘the apostle to the apostles’.
Her special place in the heart of Jesus is also discussed in apocryphal gospels. In the Gospel of Mary, Levi, one of the disciples, says: “He loved her more than us” (p.18) and Peter says: “Sister, we know that the Savior loved you more than all other women.” (p.10)
Did Jesus therefore want Mary Magdalene to be the sole or top leader of the Church after his ascension, to take his place as the head of the Church? It’s not impossible, but top leadership meant something completely different to him than what it means in our world. As he says in Mark 10:42-44: “…those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.”
So it is conceivable that in Jesus’ mind Mary Magdalene was the head of his Church, but few noticed, because she truly lived his teachings, was “the least among them”, and “did not make her authority felt” in any other way than to love, serve, and uplift all. And that is precisely how she is portrayed in the Gospel of Mary: loving and uplifting all the disciples: “Then Mary arose, embraced them all, (or “tenderly kissed them” as an earlier Greek fragment says)¹ and began to speak … Thus Mary turned their hearts toward the Good.” p.9
Independent of where we fit the two Marys within the hierarchy of Jesus’ communion of saints and keeping in mind that we are called to throw our whole concept of hierarchy out if we want to follow Jesus, we can certainly affirm that both Marys were models of the Christian and the contemplative life. I think it is safe to say, they reached its pinnacle: divine union, or what Catholics call ‘divinization’. That amazing word listed in the subject index of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and explained in article 460 with this quote by Athanasius: “The Son of God became human so that we may become God.” Both Marys have become one with and part of God, an expression of its feminine face. And we are all called to do the same.
Even if we can regard them as two equal expressions of the feminine face of God, our hearts may be drawn differently, at different times, or more strongly to one or the other. That’s okay, because there are different kinds of love. There is the passionate love of a devotee to his or her particular Gate to Heaven, his or her favorite saint or person of the Holy Trinity, and there is the love we are called to have for our entire holy family: our fellow travelers on the Way here below and all the saints in Heaven.
The first, the passionate love of a devotee, is a more exclusive one-on-one thing. The second, the love for our holy family, is a group thing where we are called to be a ‘communion of saints’ as the Creed says, and one mystical body of Christ, as the Bible says.²
To me it is essential to make time and space for both kinds of love. When we pray, it is often good to focus on one object of devotion. And sometimes it is also important to not be stingy with our love and appreciation, but to spread it around to other saints or even other persons of the trinity.
And then yes, sometimes we may sit down to pray and wonder who to turn to. Then it’s time to slow down, listen to our hearts, noticing what our souls want. Check in with yourself: Do I need the warmth of my divine Mother right now, the cool breeze of the Father, or the support of a particular older brother or sister on the Way? Who wants to come to me right now? Do I feel oppressed by patriarchy (which happens to women and men!) and need someone like Mary Magdalene, who knows what that’s like and isn’t part of it?
It is not so much that we need to choose between the Marys, it’s that sometimes we need to choose between either listening to our minds, our mental habits, or to our hearts and souls, the promptings of the Spirit. Many people have had the experience that it wasn’t them choosing a Mary, but that a Mary (or another saint or archetype) came to them, chose them. Our choice then is between welcoming and consenting or turning away. That reminds me of a good friend of mine: the first time she had a vision of Jesus during a meditation with me, she told him: “Sorry, you got the wrong address; I’m Jewish!” She eventually learned to welcome him. Please let’s try to welcome the Spirit, even when it shows up as the deity or preferred saint of a group of people, we consider our adversaries.
Sometimes there are conflicting wants and needs in us. Rather than struggling to decide between them, it’s infinitely easier to take them to prayer. For example, maybe your heart needs a divine mother, but your mind says Mother Mary is a collaborator with a patriarchal Church you’d rather keep a safe distance from. Then just ask her: “What do you have to say for yourself Mary? How do I do this? Please show me the way.” And then listen for a response. Give her and yourself time.
(My opinion on that problem is that yes, the Virgin Mary has been used by the Church to suppress women, just like Jesus has been used to oppress others, but that’s not their fault. They have done their best to challenge existing structures, but it is not their job to undo free will; they can’t force change, they can only call for it and hope someone will hear.)
Another example: maybe your heart needs your sexuality to be embraced and integrated into your spiritual path, but your mind says it’s disrespectful, dirty, historically and politically incorrect to look to Mary Magdalene (and maybe even Jesus) for help with this. Then ask Magdalene (and maybe Jesus): “What do I do? How do I do this? Can you help me?”
When we start to open to a new saint, we may not be immediately ready to put them center stage during any particular prayer time. That’s okay. Maybe invite them to be at your side for now. You can pray to one saint with another one at your side.
It is important to know that there is no jealousy or competition among the saints or the persons of the trinity. By praying to one, we automatically receive the blessings and graces of all and all of them are happy. For, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church (article 947) says: “Since all the faithful form one body, the good of each is communicated to the others.”
This unusual pieta in the church St. Sulpice in Paris depicts Mary Magdalene as Jesus’ beloved companion and something like a daughter in law of Mother Mary. photo: Ella Rozett
While the French say that Mary Magdalene spent the last 30 years of her life alone in a cave in the Provence, another strong tradition says that after Christ’s resurrection, she lived with Mother Mary and John the Evangelist in Ephesus. So besides being spiritual family, they may have also lived together as family.
To me personally, Mother Mary transmits a vertical energy connecting me to the earth below and to Heaven above, while Mary Magdalene guides me horizontally to opening to the world. Together they cover all directions and fill all dimensions with their grace.
Mary Magdalene Written out of Salvation History
Sadly, the story of Mary Magdalene in the Bible needs to be prefaced with how much of it was written out.
The first time I ever read the New Testament, long before I took the first class in feminist theology, I thought it was odd that the Gospel of John gives such an intensely personal, sort of romantic account of Mary Magdalene’s meeting with Jesus the morning of his resurrection, while barely mentioning her before. Where did that relationship suddenly come from?! If they were this close, why aren’t we told more about her?!
A lot of Bible scholars have been doing revolutionary research into these kinds of questions in the last decade. The results are amazing, shocking, and well summarized by Elizabeth Schrader in her article Was Martha of Bethany Added to the Fourth Gospel in the Second Century? This isn’t fringe; this is cutting edge academic work published online by Cambridge University Press in 2016 and here is what it says: (If you don’t want to read 52 pages of Biblical scholarship, you can watch a 10 minute summary video.
Much evidence points towards a first century competition for Head of the Church between Simon Peter, according to Matthew 16:16-19 the “Rock on whom Jesus intended to build his Church” and Mary Magdalene, “the Tower”, whose spiritual understanding of Christ’s teachings towered over the others. That’s right, she wasn’t called “Mary of Magdala” as in the town. Instead, as Luke 8:2 says, she was “Mary called Magdalene” (8:2), as in the Hebrew word for tower, quite possibly the name given her by Jesus, just like he gave Peter the name that means ‘rock’ in Hebrew.[i]
Apparently, Mary Magdalene had such standing and spiritual authority among the first Christians that some men felt threatened and took it upon themselves to quite literally write her out of the Gospels. The first two to do this were the Apostle Paul and Luke the evangelist, an associate of Paul (see: Col. 4:14; Philemon 24). They must have heard the predominant accounts of Jesus appearing first to Mary Magdalene, but decided in good, old, Jewish fashion that women didn’t count. Women’s testimony didn’t count in courts, and they weren’t counted in a census. In the Bible this is evidenced in the accounts of Jesus “feeding the 5000”. This miracle story appears in Matthew 14:13-21, Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:12-17, and John 6:1-14. Mark, Luke and John recount that “five thousand men” were fed. Only Matthew acknowledges that there were “five thousand, not counting women and children” (14:21). The other three evangelists didn’t feel a need to mention women and children. As Jews they assumed everybody knows that women and children are in every crowd but don’t count and don’t get mentioned. So even if Paul and Luke knew Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene, they apparently thought it was okay to leave her out of their accounts. Shocking, I know!
You may ask: “Would they really dare do such a thing?!” You bet! Several apostles falsified salvation history in order to keep women subjugated, even when God himself elevated them.[ii] A glaring example is Peter admonishing: “you wives, be submissive to your own husbands, just as Sarah obeyed Abraham…” (1 Peter 3:6)[iii] Nowhere in Genesis does it say that Sarah obeyed Abraham! On the contrary, when Sarah demands that Abraham does something excruciatingly painful like casting his second wife and first born son out, God tells Abraham: “Do not be so distressed about the boy and your slave woman. Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you…” (Gen 21:12) I don’t think Church patriarchs grasp to this day how much they are going directly against the will of God when they keep women subordinate.
Mary Magdalene becomes Martha of Bethany in papyrus 66
The above cited research paper by Elizabeth Schrader focuses on the story of the raising of Lazarus (Jn 11:1-44) She examined “Papyrus 66”, the oldest extant copy of the Gospel of John, and found that its scribe made 450 changes to the that Gospel. Most of those changes are minor, but several times in the story of the raising of Lazarus, he replaced the name Mary (Maria in Greek) with the name Martha or with “the sisters”. This is very significant, because it means that it was actually Mary, not Martha, who delivered the “Christological Confession” in John 11:27: “I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” Even the Church Father Tertullian, born in 160 C.E., the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature, says so.[iv]
It is precisely for this kind of a “Christological confession” that Peter is proclaimed the head of the Church in Mt 16:16-19: “Simon Peter said in reply, ‘You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.’ Jesus said to him in reply, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.’ ” In Mark 8:29 and Luke 9:20 Peter simply says: “You are the Messiah” and Jesus says nothing about him therefore deserving to be the foundation of the Church and the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.
Schrader concludes that “a Johannine text form without Martha would create a strong textual implication that Mary of Bethany was Mary Magdalene.”[v] (That doesn’t mean we have to throw out the beautiful story in Luke 10:38-42 of Martha and her sister, another Mary, hosting Jesus and the disciples in an unspecified village. There is no mention in this story that they had a brother called Lazarus. According to Schrader, these sisters were actually unrelated to Mary Magdalene and her brother Lazarus.)
Schrader quotes Mark Goodacre’s article The Magdalene Effect: Misreading the Composite Mary in Early Christian Works noting “that in John 11 and 12, her name is simply ‘Mary.’ The term “Mary of Bethany” is a scholarly convenience, used to distinguish her from other women of the same name. . . . Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany are never seen in the same room at the same time and they share similar traits like weeping at a tomb before a resurrection (John 11, John 20). Although Mary “of Magdala” has become a scholarly commonplace, it is worth remembering that she is never described this way in the Synoptics or John, where she is always “Mary Magdalene” or just “Mary.””[vi] François Bovon suggests that Martha was used to undermine the authority of Mary Magdalene.[vii]
If Peter deserved to be the foundation of the Church because of his Christological confession, then he should have shared that position with Mary Magdalene. She made the same confession and was honored with the supreme privilege of being the first witness and the first person Jesus spoke to after the resurrection.
Mary Magdalene in the Bible
Tragically, most of Mary Magdalene’s relationship with Jesus is left out of Biblical accounts. Here is the little bit we are told.
A couple of times the Bible lists women, who followed Jesus with his disciples and "provided for them out of their resources". (Matthew 27:56, Mark 15:40) Even the most conservative Catholic organizations like Sensus Fidelium, admit: “Mary Magdalene holds a place among the women similar to Simon Peter in that even as Simon Peter is always mentioned first in the list of the apostles, so Mary Magdalene is mentioned first in groups of women where she is present.”[viii]
This is where Luke mentions that Jesus freed her from seven demons (Luke 8:2). It has often been assumed that she had therefore been especially sinful or possessed, but don’t we all have at least seven hindrances between us and complete divine union? And couldn’t we therefore shift the emphasis from her being especially sinful to being especially liberated from anything that may have stood between her and God? Then we can see her not as someone still tainted by a shadowy past, but as a woman who was particularly blessed and freed.
Mary Magdalene’s honorary title "the apostle to the apostles" is based on the Gospels of Matthew and John, where Jesus picked her to be the first person to whom he revealed himself after his resurrection and whom he sent to tell the good news to the other disciples.
All four gospels agree (which is rare) that Mary Magdalene was the first person to receive the Good News that Jesus rose from the dead. In Matthew 27:55-28:18 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph are the only ones keeping watch at Jesus' tomb all night. Then they go home for one night, only to return early the next morning, before dawn. An angel greets them at the empty tomb, tells them that Jesus has risen and commands them to run to the disciples and tell them where to meet Jesus. The two Marys are "fearful yet overjoyed". As they are running to do what they were told, Jesus appears to them. The women "approached, embraced his feet, and did him homage." (MT 28:9) He repeats the same message the angel had already given them: go and tell the others where to meet me. The other disciples meet Jesus in the designated place, worship him duly, but (unlike the women) they doubt.
Mark 15:40 - 16:13 tells the story similarly: first “a young man … clothed in a long white garment” told Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome that Jesus was risen and sent the three to tell his disciples where to meet him. Then Jesus himself appears to Mary Magdalene alone. Mark puts more emphasis on the male disciples' disbelief. They do not believe Mary Magdalene that Jesus rose from the dead, nor do they believe two other men who later report the same thing. For this they get a stern reprimand from the risen Christ: “Later Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen. … And he said: “…Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” (MK 16:14-16)
John mentions Mary Magdalene as standing under the cross with the other two Marys (See article: Mother Mary and the Bible) and gives the most beautiful account of her being the first disciple the risen Jesus appears (Jn 20:1-18). She comes alone to the tomb in the dark before dawn and finds it empty. She runs to Peter and the other apostles to report that “they have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.” The men run to the tomb, inspect it, and return home. But Mary Magdalene stays there and cries so hard that she doesn't recognize Jesus when he speaks to her until he calls her by her name: "Mary!" Then she immediately exclaims: "Rabbouni!" which means, my teacher, or my master. Apparently, she flings herself at him and wants to hold on to him, because he warns her saying: "Stop holding on to me, (Others translate: "Don't touch me!") for I have not yet ascended to the Father."
Kayleen Asbo, a great expert in everything to do with Mary Magdalene, has pointed out that many Biblical scholars have long drawn parallels between the resurrection account in the Gospel of John and the Song of Songs in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). This erotic love song between a searching bride and her lost beloved has been cherished within the mystical tradition as a Christian allegory of the soul longing for divine union since the 4th century (see the writings of Origen, Bernard of Clairvaux , John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila on this subject).
In 2016, Pope Francis elevated Mary Magdalene’s memorial to a feast day. On that occasion Archbishop Arthur Roche, secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, explained the meaning of the decree that will enable Mary Magdalene to be celebrated liturgically like the rest of the apostles.” The decree also instructs the Church that this passage from the Song of Songs be included in the liturgy, as it had been in the 8th century within the Celtic Christian church:
“All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves; I looked for him but did not find him. I will get up now and go about the city, through its streets and squares; I will search for the one my heart loves. So I looked for him but did not find him. The watchmen found me as they made their rounds in the city. “Have you seen the one my heart loves?” Scarcely had I passed them when I found the one my heart loves. I held him and would not let him go” (3:1-4)
Luke’s Gospel is problematic when it comes to Mary Magdalene, because, as Ann Graham Brock shows convincingly in her book Mary Magdalene, the First Apostle: the Struggle for Authority[ix], this evangelist does everything he can to bolster the authority of Peter and diminish hers. He leaves out the part where Jesus sends her to proclaim his resurrection, presumably because that would make her not just an Apostle, “one sent by Jesus to proclaim the Good News”, but the Apostle to the Apostles. Instead, he depicts Mary Magdalene receiving the news at the tomb together with a bunch of other women, from “two men in dazzling garments” (24:4). The women take it upon themselves to tell “the eleven and all the others” (24:9); they are not commissioned by Heaven. In Luke’s Gospel, the first mention of any disciples encountering the resurrected Christ is in the story of Jesus’ appearance to two of them on the road to Emmaus. At the end of that, he slips in a little sentence one almost misses: “The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!” (24:34) He has no story to back this claim up with, because, it seems, at this point in the sequence of events transmitted to Luke, there was none.
Mary Magdalene in the Apocryphal Gospels
Mary Magdalene and resurrected Jesus, "Noli me Tangere" by Correggio
Apocryphal gospels are those that were not admitted into the Bible. Since they were suppressed, only fragments and damaged copies have been found so far. Words in [square brackets] mark holes in the manuscript that were filled in by scholars' best guesses. Empty brackets [ ] mean no guesses can be made; too much is missing.
Mary Magdalene figures prominently in "the Gospel of Philip", "the Gospel of Mary", and in the "Dialogue of the Savior". In all three she is presented as his favorite, most enlightened disciple. But that does not at all mean that she is unanimously revered by the disciples. On the contrary, every gospel speaks of conflict surrounding her. The apocryphal gospels are particularly clear that this is because of some of the male disciples’ (particularly Peter’s) jealousy and disrespect for women. Gender conflicts are talked about explicitly. They get patched up temporarily but not really resolved.
So much for Dan Brown and all those people who want to believe that the first Christians were free of such conflict and that the urge to suppress women in general and Mary Magdalene in particular only came later when the Roman Catholic church established itself as an institution of the Roman Empire. Certainly, the Emperor Constantine was no help for women's liberation, but even while Jesus was alive, most of his male disciples could not follow him in his egalitarian treatment of the other sex.
The canonical (biblical) gospels don't delve as deeply into the gender conflict, though they mention jealousy and competitiveness even among the male disciples. Concerning the apostles' feelings about Mary Magdalene, they only mention that the male disciples didn't believe her that Jesus had risen. But then they don't believe men either³, and not even Jesus himself. As the Gospel of Matthew says about their encounter with the risen Jesus on the mountain in Galilee, to which he had ordered them: “When they saw him, they worshipped, but they doubted.” (Mt 28:17)
The apocryphal gospels themselves are not unanimously or uniformly pro-feminine. E.g. the Gospel of Thomas ends like this:
"Simon Peter said to him, 'Mary should leave us, for women are not worthy of the Life.' Yeshua (Jesus) answered: This is how I will guide her so that she becomes Man. She too, will become a living breath like you Men. Any woman who will make herself a Man will enter into the Kingdom of God."⁴
Some say that this passage contradicts earlier statements in the Gospel of Thomas and was therefore probably added by a later redactor. They are referring to verse 22: "Yeshua answered them: When you make the two into One, when you make the inner like the outer and the high like the low; when you make male and female into a single One, so that the male is ot male and the female is not female; when you have eyes in your eyes, a hand in your hand, a foot in your foot, and an icon in your icon, then you will enter [the Kingdom]."⁵
"The Dialogue of the Savior", while granting Mary a place of special honor, also equates "femaleness" with inferiority, worldliness, and obstacles to the spiritual path. It says 144:15-21:
"When we pray, how should we pray? The Lord said, 'Pray in the place where there is [no] woman.' Matthew said, 'He says to us, 'Pray in the place where there is [no] woman,' ... 'Destroy [the] works of femaleness,' not because she is another [...], but so that they (the works) will cease [from you]."⁶
The Gospels of Philip and of Mary both recount the jealousy of the male disciples because Jesus loved Mary more than them and revealed things to her that he didn't reveal to them.
The Gospel of Mary includes an account of what Jesus said to her in a vision. Peter had asked her for this account saying (in 10:1-5): "Sister, we know that the Savior loved you more than the rest of women. Tell us the words of the Savior which you remember - which you know (but) we do not, nor have we heard them."
But when she finishes:
"Andrew answered and said to the brethren, 'Say what you (wish to) say about what she has said. I at least do not believe that the Savior said this. For certainly these teachings are strange ideas.' Peter answered and spoke concerning these same things. He questioned them about the Savior: 'Did he really speak privately with a woman (and) not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?' Then Mary wept and said to Peter, 'My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Savior?' Levi answered and said to Peter, 'Peter, you have always been hot-tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well. That is why he loved her more than us. Rather let us be ashamed and put on the perfect man, and separate, as he commanded us and preach the gospel, not laying down any other rule or other law beyond what the Savior said.' When [...] and they began to go forth [to] proclaim and to preach." (17:10-end of gospel)
The Gospel of Philip 63:31-10 states:
"And the companion of the S[avior is] Mary Magdalene ... her more than ... the disciples ... kiss her ... on her ... The rest of ... they said to him, 'Why do you love her more than all of us?' The Savior answered them, 'Why do I not love you like her? When a blind man and one who sees are both together in darkness, they are no different from one another. When the light comes, then he who sees will see the light, and he who is blind will remain in darkness.' " -- Apparently Mary Magdalene was far more enlightened than the other disciples.
People fill in the gaps in the text according to the context, which suggests that Jesus kissed her on the mouth. They read: "The Savior loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth."
But even if Jesus often kissed her on the mouth, one still cannot assume that they also had sexual intercourse. Four chapters earlier Philip speaks about kissing on the mouth as a ritual act of being born or "begotten" spiritually of Jesus:
"[Those who] are begotten by him [cry out] from that place to the (perfect) man [because they are nourished] on the promise [concerning] the heavenly [place. ...] from the mouth, [because if] the word has gone out from that place it would be nourished from the mouth and it would become perfect. For it is by a kiss that the perfect conceive and give birth (to their spiritual selves). For this reason we also kiss one another. We receive conception from the grace which is in each other." 58:30-59:5
Sounds like they all kissed each other on the mouth. Were they all married to each other? Were they advocating same sex and group marriage?! Of course not. At least during the first five hundred years of Christianity kissing each other on the mouth was part of celebrating the ritual of the Eucharist (or "last supper") even within the main stream Church. It is refered to in the biography of Mary of Egypt (More on her below). The ancient text describes this extremely chaste and humble hermitess receiving the Eucharist the night before her death: "After the prayer has been spoken, she kisses the priest, as is the custom, on the mouth, receives the holy mysteries and says..." (Gertrude and Thomas Sartory: Maria von Aegypten - Allmacht der Busse, Herder Taschenbuch, 1982, p.55)
It is true that the Gospel of Philip continues for 13 pages to talk about the great mystery of marriage and the original unity of man and woman in the first human (before the female aspect was separated out). It says that: "Christ came to repair the separation which was from the beginning and again unite the two". (70:15) But it also speaks about the mystery of the "bridal chamber" in a very confusing, obscure, and esoteric way, suggesting that it far exceeds anything an ordinary person would associate with bridal chambers. E.g. in 74:19-20: "He who has been anointed possesses everything. He possesses the resurrection, the light, the cross, the Holy Spirit. The Father gave him this in the bridal chamber;" And in verse 67 it says: "It is from water and fire and light that the son of the bridal chamber (came into being). (...) The Lord [did] everything in a mystery, a baptism and a chrism and a eucharist and a redemption and a bridal chamber." The Gospel of Thomas 50:15 refers to the "bridal chamber" as the place (this earth) where the bridegroom, Jesus, gets to be with his bride, the disciples.
The gospel of Philip does seem to suggest that Jesus found a deep spiritual union with Mary Magdalene which he deemed extremely important, but which might have been purely spiritual. For he says in 65:30 - 66:5:
"He who comes out of the world can no longer be detained because he was in the world. It is evident that he is above desire and fear. (...) Fear not the flesh, nor love it. If you fear it, it will gain mastery over you. If you love it, it will swallow and paralyze you." And (76:9): "in the aeon the form of the union is different, although we refer to them by the same names." (78:30-79:2): "So spirit mingles with spirit, and thought consorts with thought. (...) If you become light, it is the light which will share with you." (82:4-8) "If there is a hidden quality to the marriage of defilement, how much more is the undefiled marriage a true mystery. It is not fleshly but pure. It belongs not to desire but to the will."
Some people claim that 'companion', the title given to Mary Magdalene in the Gospel of Philip, was an equivalent to 'wife'. Yet "The Book of Thomas the Contender", also contained in the Nag Hammadi Library, bestows the same title on Thomas. In 138:6-10 Jesus says: "Now since it has been said that you are my twin and true companion, examine yourself that you may understand who you are, in what way you exist, and how you will come to be."
It seems to me that if Mary and Jesus were married in the ordinary, "defiled" way (as the Gospel of Philip would call it), the disciples wouldn't have been so baffled why he would love her more than them and why he would say things to her that he didn't say to others. Wouldn't patriarchs love to explain her special status away by saying it grew out of her marriage to Jesus? Isn't it much more of a challenge to patriarchal thinking to have to acknowledge that she was that special in and of herself and that Jesus appreciated her fully without using her for himself in any way?
Mary Magdalene’s status in the Catholic Church
In the beginning Mary Magdalene was the star disciple of Jesus, the apostle to the apostles (Latin: apostula apostulorum, her title since at least the 2nd century), the first witness of the resurrection and the first Jesus talked to. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 C.E.), the preeminent theologian of the Middle Ages says about her: “Note the three privileges given to Mary Magdalene. First, she had the privilege of being a prophet because she was worthy enough to see the angels, for a prophet is an intermediary between angels and the people. Second, she had the dignity or rank of an angel insofar as she looked upon Christ, on whom the angels desire to look. Third, she had the office of an apostle; indeed, she was an apostle to the apostles insofar as it was her task to announce our Lord’s resurrection to the disciples. Thus, just as it was a woman who was the first to announce the words of death, so it was a woman who would be the first to announce the words of life.”[1]
How and why did she go from such high status to being regarded as a repentant prostitute, beloved by the saints, but largely ignored by the Church hierarchy? Many people blame Pope St. Gregory the Great for this demotion, because of the sermon he gave in 591 C.E. about the “sinful woman”, who bathed the feet of Jesus in her tears and “has not stopped kissing them” (Luke 7:36–50) – for which Christ himself highly praised her. Before we look at who really is to blame, let’s take a closer look at Pope Gregory’s sermon.
Yes he did say: “She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary [of Bethany], we believe to be Mary [Magdalene], from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark.” What he did not say is this:
First, he did not say that she was definitely the “sinful woman”. He said, “we”, that is the majority of Christians at the time, “believe” the two characters to be the same person (even though there is no proof of it).
St. Mary Magdalene dries the feet of Jesus with her hair. Window in St. Edmund Catholic Church, Southampton, UK, photo: Ella Rozett
Interesting to note that he acknowledges that the Church also believed Mary, the sister of Lazarus, to be the same as Mary Magdalene. As explained above in the chapter Mary Magdalene Written out of Salvation History, cutting-edge feminist Bible scholars agree with him. She comes to the surprising conclusion that the two sisters of Lazarus may have actually been one person: Mary Magdalene, and that Martha as the sister of Lazarus and Mary [Magdalene] was a late second to early third century invention worked into the Gospel in order to diminish the power of the Magdalene. How could “Mary of Magdala” be the same person as “Mary of Bethany”? Because both those names are inventions of Bible scholars. Nowhere in the New Testament does it mention a “Mary of Magdala”, only “Mary Magdalene” or “Mary called Magdalene [the tower]”. Similarly, there is mention of a Mary in the village Bethany, but she isn’t called “Mary of Bethany” in the Bible.
So Pope Gregory may have been right that Mary Magdalene was the sister of Lazarus, who lived in Bethany.
Secondly, Pope Gregory did not say that if Mary Magdalene was the sinful woman in John, this means that she was therefore above average evil or not worthy of high esteem. On the contrary, he says that the self-righteous pharisee and Mary are equal in their sin up to the moment of meeting Jesus, but that Mary is far superior in her self-awareness and transformation. While in Pope Gregory’s account, before meeting Jesus, Magdalene was “full of all vices” and “formerly addicted to forbidden deeds”, her encounter with Christ caused a complete transformation in her, the kind of transformation that to him is the mark of any good Christian. The same kind of transformation turned Levi, a tax collector, the epitome of evil collaborator and parasite on his own people, into the apostle and evangelist Matthew, Saul, the ultra-conservative Jewish persecutor of Christians, into Paul the apostles to the gentiles, and Peter, to whom Jesus said: “Get behind me Satan” (Mt 16:23) and who denied Jesus three times, into the foundation of his Church. Transforming sinners into saints is precisely Jesus’ mission and all his apostles are examples of transformation.
Us modern, feminist admirers of Mary Magdalene often feel called to ‘clean her up’ as it were. We want to deny the story of her having been freed of seven demons and we want her cleared of any allegations of having been a prostitute or adulteress. Many don’t even want to see her portrayed as a disciple of Jesus, but instead claim that she was his equal partner from the start.
St. Peter not cleaned up but with the keys denoting his power and the rooster denoting his threefold denial of Jesus. A fresco in the church Maria Stern, Neukirchen am Simssee, Germany, photo: Ella Rozett
I’m not sure we do her a favor by cleaning her up. Christian theology is quite used to its Biblical saints having a messy past. It celebrates that this makes them real and means all of us with our messy past and present still have a chance of becoming saints. The fact that the Gospels are full of embarrassing details about conflict even among the inner group and about Jesus’ frequent frustration with his disciples is taken as proof that they are real eyewitness accounts.[i] The cleaner Magdalene becomes, the less real she is to me.
Pope Gregory does not clean her up and yet he has nothing but praise for her who: “has completely consumed in her the rust of sin, because it is all burning with the fire of love. (…) It is therefore very well that this woman represents us [all converted pagans], so long as we return with all our heart to the Lord after having sinned and that we imitate the tears of her penance. As for perfume, what does it express, if not the smell of a good reputation? Hence the word of Paul: ‘We are in every place for God the good odor of Christ’ (2 Cor 2: 15). If, therefore, we do good works, which imbue the Church with a good odor by making it speak good, what are we doing but pouring perfume on the body of the Lord?”
The people he scorns are “certain bishops” who make him “groan” with exasperation. He compares them to the arrogant pharisee in the Bible story, who judges even Jesus for allowing the sinful woman to touch him. He talks at length about how hopelessly lost people like the pharisee are, who are blind to their own sinfulness.
He is also hard on “unbelieving Jews”, who like the pharisee don’t think they need Jesus. For Magdalene however, he has nothing but the highest praise and holds her up as the ideal Christian:
“In what esteem must the Truth hold the works of this sinful but penitent woman, to enumerate them to her adversary with such a luxury of precision! The Lord was at the table of the Pharisee but reveled in the nourishment of the soul with the penitent woman. … The penitent woman, therefore, nourished the Lord within, with a more substantial nourishment than that provided by the Pharisee outside …. So bring back the eyes of your mind on you, dear brothers, yes, on you, and propose to imitate the example of this penitent sinner. Cry all the faults you remember to have committed both in your adolescence and in your youth; wash by your tears the stains of your manners and works. Let us now love the feet of our Redeemer, whom we have despised by sinning. Behold, as we have said, the bosom of heavenly mercy opens to receive us without contempt for our corrupt life. “
If not Pope Gregory the Great, who then is to blame for the side lining of Magdalene? In my opinion, first of all the evangelists, including Paul, who wrote her out of the story as much as they could. Secondly, those men who changed the earliest accounts, literally rewriting what was salvation history for all into a story primarily for men.
Thirdly, those early ‘Church Fathers’ who refused to include the Gospel of Mary into the canon or into Catholic tradition, even though nothing in it was declared heretical and it was widely read and respected. Let me explain a bit more about that.
The Gospel of Mary (discovered in Egypt in 1896) was written in the 2nd Century CE, probably by somebody in the ‘Johannine community’ that grew around John the evangelist. The Wikipedia article on the Gospel of Mary quotes three prominent scholars on the subject, who date the text to the early part of the 2nd Century (Karen King), the middle (Christopher Tuckett) or the second half (Anne Pasquier). Likely it was written or at least became widely known after the canon of the New Testament had already been settled upon by common usage. This happened in the early 2nd century, though the New Testament canon didn’t become more formally ratified until the 4th century by people like Athanasius in his 39th Festal Letter written in 367 CE.
Another formative text, 2nd century A.D. Protevangelium of James, simply missed the boat of making it into the canon.[ii] Could it be that the same was true for the Gospel of Mary? Some things speak for this:
1. It was never directly condemned as heretical. In the early 3rd century, the church historian Eusebius of Caesarea compiled a list of texts which were deemed heretical. The Gospel of Mary is not included on this list. Again, in the 5th century, a similar list was compiled and her gospel was not on it, this time by Pope Gelasius (reigned 492-496) in the 5th chapter of his Gelasian Decree which records “distrusted and rejected works not encouraged by the Church”.
2. It was widely read and respected between the 2nd and 5th centuries. Karen King makes this claim based on the fact that we have early fragments in two languages, Coptic and Greek, and that fragments were found in three separate finds, more than any other apocryphal gospel. The oldest fragment of the Gospel of Mary found so far is from the early 3rd century.
3. It is very significant that no one dared to openly criticize the Gospel of Mary. Many works, including the Revelation of John/the Apocalypse were hotly debated and slandered in the early Church, but never the Gospel of Mary. Only by grouping it unnamed with ‘all other so-called gospels’ that weren’t the four in the canon, was it able to be suppressed.
Why then did the Protoevangelium of James become part of Catholic tradition and some of it even dogma sixteen centuries later,[iii] but not the Gospel of Mary? The answer lies in one word: patriarchy. It’s not hard to figure out. The gospel itself tells us that Peter questioned: “Did he [Jesus] really speak secretly with a woman and not openly so that we all might hear? Are we all going to turn around [“change our {patriarchal} customs” in Leloup’s translation] and listen to her?”[iv] Remember, these are the same men who marveled that Jesus would even talk to a woman who wasn’t his kin. (See Jn 4:27, the story of Samaritan woman at the well.)
Patriarchy teaches fear of equality, fear of losing power and status, fear of being subjugated by the other sex, by one’s spouse. Any public honoring of women and especially any time a woman did something a man couldn’t, men felt “put to shame”. As St. Jerome (late 4th century) says in the preface to his commentary to the Book of Zephaniah: “the risen lord appeared first to women, and those women were apostles to the apostles [apostolorum . . . apostolas], so that the men were put to shame for not having sought out the lord, whom the weaker sex had already found.[v]
And so it was only the courageous and humble men, those who were obedient to the Holy Spirit even to the point of death of their male egos, slain by love, in other words, the saints, who could praise Mary of Magdala without reservations. Here are some examples of the praises they sang.
In countless depictions of the crucifixion since the Middle Ages, Mary Magdalene is portrayed as the one closest to the cross of Christ, her whole body and soul draped around it, in closer union with Jesus than even his mother and St. John, who stand near (See 3 more examples below under the subheading Dan Brown’s “the Da Vinci Code”).
left: stations of the cross, St. Edmund’s Catholic Church, Southampton, UK, photo: Ella Rozett
right: stained glass window, St. Peter ad Vincula Church, Tollard Royal, UK, photo: Ella Rozett
No wonder then, that Julian of Norwich (14th century), when she talks about wanting to be present with Christ at his crucifixion like the disciples, mentions only Mary Magdalene by name: “I wanted to be actually there with Mary Magdalene and the others who loved him, and with my own eyes to see and know more of the physical suffering of our Savior, and the compassion of Our Lady and of those who there and then were loving him truly and watching his pains.”[vi]
Mary Magdalene absorbed in her contemplation while three other women work to make ointments. Stained glass window in Church St. Mary the Virgin, Eling, UK, photo: David Curtis
Since Mary Magdalene was equated not only with the “sinful woman” but also with Mary of Bethany, who sat at the feet of Jesus while her sister Martha exhausted herself in the kitchen, she was able to become the patron saint of contemplatives. And so it is no surprise that the paramount medieval book on Christian contemplation, the 14th century “Cloud of Unknowing” (anonymous) has much so say about Mary Magdalene. “Mary is the [proto]type of contemplatives, that they should match their lives with hers.”[vii] The author argues that she shows that perfect humility and union with God cannot be reached by excessive focus on one’s sins, but only through a “secret and urgent love”.[viii] “Sweet indeed was that love between our Lord and Mary [Magdalene]. Much love had she for him. Much more had he for her. Whoever would really understand what passed between him and her (…) would find that her love for him was so heartfelt, that nothing less than himself could satisfy her.” And then the author points out that not even the angels of God could console her on Easter morning: “…she would not stop weeping for them, because she thought that whoever was seeking the King of angels would not stop for mere angels. (…) This is great love; indeed, surpassing love.”[ix]
Bridget of Sweden (c. 1303 – 23 July 1373) claimed that Jesus said to her: Three saints have been more pleasing to me than all others: Mary my mother, John the Baptist, and Mary Magdalene.” This same Bridget founded the order of the Bridgettines and insisted that an "abbess, signifying the Virgin Mary, should preside over both nuns and monks (of the monastery she founded)." [x]
Catherine of Siena (1347 – 1380) called Mary Magdalene her spiritual mother.
St. Francis de Sales (1567 – 1622) preached: “We can therefore rightly appoint her [St. Mary Magdalene] as the queen of all Christians and children of the Church, … Saint Magdalene is queen of the righteous; for what could make her more righteous than this ‘dilection’ (French: pure, spiritual love), joined with her great humility and compunction that always made her be at the feet of the Savior?”[xi]
And then finally in 2016, Pope Francis elevated Mary Magdalene’s memorial to a feast day and the Vatican’s press office explained: “the decree will enable Mary Magdalene to be celebrated liturgically like the rest of the apostles.”[xii]
The next step would be to acknowledge that she actually was an apostle like the other apostles and may have been among the 72 whom Jesus sent out after the first 12. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the 72 apostles were all men. On the contrary, in his letter to the Romans 16:7 Paul says: „Greet Andronicus and Junia ... who are of note among the Apostles and were in Christ before I was.” Later commentators and editors of the Bible turned the woman Junia into a man Junius, but the early Christians knew she was a woman. E.g. John Chrysostom, who died in 407 A.D. wrote: “And indeed to be apostles at all is a great thing. But to be even among these of note, just consider what a great encomium this is! But they were of note owing to their works, to their achievements. Oh! How great is the devotion (or wisdom?)(φιλοσοφία) of this woman, that she should be even counted worthy of the appellation of apostle! But even here he does not stop, but adds another encomium besides, and says, Who were also in Christ before me.”[xiii]
Things move very slowly from the bottom up in the Catholic Church. E.g. the assumption of Mary was first celebrated in the 4th century and didn’t become an official dogma until 1950! Let’s pray that now that we are outgrowing patriarchy and are in the world of a super-fast world wide web, maybe Mary Magdalene can be elevated further to her rightful place among the apostles. And more than that: Maybe the unnamed woman in the Gospel of Mark, of whom Jesus says: “And truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is preached in the whole word, what she has done will be told in memory of her” (14:9) can finally be honored the way Jesus envisioned. And why not suppose she too was Mary Magdalene?! And then maybe the remaining pages of Mary’s Gospel can still be found, and it will be included in the sacred canon after all. May it be so!
Endnotes to this chapter on her status in the Church
[1] In his Lectura super Ioannis, caput 20, lectio 3:2519, quoted in a beautiful post “Apostles to the Apostles” https://thomistica.net/posts/tag/Mary+Magdalene
[i] One such example is Bishop Robert Barron, who talks about “even the most skeptical historical critics” agreeing on certain stories, “based upon two criteria: multiple attestation and embarrassment (elements that the Christian community would prefer to have suppressed but that still find their way into the Gospels are most likely based on historical fact.” See: This is my Body: a Call to Eucharistic Revival, Word on Fire, Elk Grove Village: 2023, p. 53-4.
[ii] cf: John Barton, Holy Writings, Sacred Text: The Canon of Early Christianity, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky: 1997, p. 284
[iii] E.g. Mother Mary’s ‘perpetual virginity’ and ‘immaculate conception’, ideas first put forth in the Protoevangelium of James, became dogma in 553 and 1854 A.D. respectively.
[iv] David Curtis’ translation of the Gospel of Mary and Jean-Yves Leloup, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont: 2002, p.17 of the gospel.
[v] St. Jerome, Commentarii in Sophoniam Prophetam, prologus (ccl 76/A, 655); english translation: Jerome: Commentaries on the Twelve Prophets, ed. Thomas p. Scheck, Ancient christian texts, 1, Downers Grove, Il: interVarsity press: 2016, pp. 114–115.
For further references to other church Fathers and new testament apocrypha, see Rosemarie Nürnberg, “Apostolae apostolorum: die Frauen am grab als erste Zeuginnen der Auferstehung in der Väterexegese,” in Stimuli: Exegese und ihre Hermeneutik in Antike und Christentum: Festschrift für Ernst Dassmann, ed. Georg Schöllgen and Clemens Scholten, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum: supplement, 23 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1996) 228–242.
[vi] Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, Penguin Books: 1978, p. 63
[vii] The Cloud of Unknowing, Penguin Books: 1978, p. 84
[viii] Ibid. p. 81
[ix] Ibid. p.89-90
[x] http://www.tarcisius.org/2010/07/st-mary-magdalen-and-altar-servers.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridget_of_Sweden
[xi] Sermon on the feast day of Mary Magdalene in 1621 https://visitationspirit.org/2022/07/st-francis-de-sales-sermon-on-st-mary-magdalen/
[xii] See an article entitled “Mary Magdalene, apostle of the apostles, 10.06.2016 “
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2016/06/10/160610c.html
[xiii] Epistulam ad Romanos, Homilia 31, 2: PG 60, 669f. The full translation can be found here: (scroll down to verse 7) https//www.newadvent.org/fathers/210231.htm
Mary Magdalene a Former Prostitute?
Another question we need to discuss is, why did the early Church decide to identify the "sinful woman", i.e. prostitute, who washed Jesus feet with her tears and covered them with kisses, with Mary Magdalene? There is much evidence that after the ascension of Jesus, there was not only considerable tension between Peter and Paul, but also between Peter and Mary Magdalene. While Mary Magdalene was perhaps his closest disciple, the one who best understood and embodied his teachings and who possibly led the Johannine community,⁷ Peter claimed authority as the founding father of the apostolic lineage of the Catholic Church. Gradually, references to Miriam (Mary Magdalene’s Hebrew name) were literally edited out of the canonical gospels, as the recent work of Elizabeth Schrader⁸ has shown. In one apocryphal book – the Acts of Phillip – her heroic character was completely removed and replaced with Peter in a later re-working of the text.⁹ These developments were happening at the time when Christianity was being adopted as the single official religion of the Roman empire. We can reasonably surmise that Mary Magdalene’s tradition and lineage became seen as politically untenable in a world where patriarchal superiority was the only socially acceptable norm. By falsely labelling and effectively discounting her as a prostitute, the Christian tradition which she led and the gospel in her name became sidelined and buried.
Nowadays many suspect that this happened out of malice, in the attempt to denigrate Mary Magdalene and to topple her from her place of honor. It is true that for millennia men have downplayed or defamed every strong and virtuous woman in the Bible. However, there is a saying that ‘God writes straight with crooked lines’ and I think calling Mary Magdalene a former prostitute served a broader need of men as well as women.
The first problem this solution addresses is that the Bible doesn't introduce Mary Magdalene properly. Out of nowhere she appears as foremost among the women followers of Jesus and as the one he is closest to after his resurrection. The text mentions in an aside that he healed her from seven demons, but it does not seem to explain why there is this special love between them. So one is naturally left looking for clues to fill in her story and to link her to other stories in the Bible. One such possible clue may be that both the "sinful woman" and Mary kiss his feet and are very passionate in expressing their love. Jesus rewards them both for their free show of devotion. The second clue is that the story of the "sinful woman" in Luke 7: 36-50 is immediately followed by his first mention of Mary Magdalene. In this story Jesus stresses the exemplary love and devotion of the woman and explains it by saying: "many sins have been forgiven her, hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little." (Lk 7:47) According to this reasoning it would follow that Mary Magdalene must have sinned much before she found Jesus, because she certainly loved him a lot.
"Penitent St. Mary Magdalene" by Titian
The second problem Magdalene's characterization as a former prostitute addresses is women's frustration with the Virgin Mary as the prime example of what a good woman should be like. How many times have I heard Catholic women complain that they had a problem with Mother Mary because she is an impossible example to follow! How can we be expected to be a mother, wife, and virgin?! To be as much like her as possible, women were traditionally admonished to be wives and mothers, yet also "chaste". That is to say, on the one hand they were not to be sexy, not to want or enjoy sex. On the other hand they were to grant sex to their husbands whenever the men wanted it, as their "marital duty" and their duty to God to procreate. This made many women angry, not at the men, with whom it wasn't safe to be angry, but with the Virgin Mary, who seemingly put them in this position. Men didn't appreciate this virgin-wife example either, because it didn't allow them to have much fun with their own wives.
Then, along comes Mary Magdalene, the former prostitute and a passionate, heroic woman to the end. She may be reformed but at least she knows all about sex. She is never demure, but defiant, free, and self-confident.
Was it not a gift to have a variety of women among the disciples of Christ? Do feminists and Goddess worshippers not profess that one needs to honor the feminine in all its archetypes: as the virgin, the whore, the maiden, mother, and crone? As the apocryphal text “The Thunder Perfect Mind” (in the Nag Hamadi Library) says: “I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore and the holy one.” It seems to me that's what Christians were trying to do. They acknowledge the virgin, mother, prostitute, and crone.
The crone finds supreme expression in the gospels as Elizabeth, Mother Mary's cousin and the mother of John the Baptist. (To see how important Elizabeth's spiritual and emotional support was for Mother Mary, read in the article "Mother Mary in the Bible")
Elizabeth and the Virgin Mary in: "Visitation" by Master of the retablo of the Reyes Catolicos
All these women are in the inner circle of Jesus and nothing bad is ever said about them. Even if Mary Magdalene is identified with the former prostitute, this is never held against her. On the contrary, the Catholic Church sanctified her because she left that way of life and Jesus forgave, loved, honored, and defended her.
It is true that celibate priests tend to focus on the virginal Mary rather than on the passionate Magdalene who knows everything about "down there". Unfortunately, they cannot freely indulge an issue that is as threatening to them as sexuality. But Christian artists were always happy to take up the cause. Next to the demurely covered virgin, they love to portray a dramatic and sensual Mary Magdalene. Her big, flowing, traditionally red hair has long been a symbol of a Christian's ability (or at least hope) to make peace with the force of sexuality.
There is one more reason why Mary Magdalene was dubbed "reformed prostitute": Some time between the 4th and 6th centuries there lived a woman ascetic in the desert of the Holy Land. Her name was Mary of Egypt, and she really was a reformed prostitute from Alexandria who became famous for making a 180 degree turn from extreme lustfulness to extreme holiness, exchanging sexual union with men for divine union with God. She lived 47 years in the desert, naked and practically without food. In the Orthodox Christian world, she is still revered, but in Catholic Christendom her story was gradually melded into the story of Mary Magdalene, the other famous penitent. The two kept getting mixed up with one another, until Mary of Egypt was forgotten, and her story tagged onto Mary Magdalene. Hence the French tradition that Mary Magdalene lived as a hermitess in Sainte Baume, Provence, dressed only in her hair, and fed only by the angels. (See: ibid.: p.12. For more details on Mary of Egypt google her name + catholic or + orthodox)
By the way, referring to someone as a "penitent" does not imply that the person is particularly sinful (as is often assumed by non-Christians). Rather it means they chose an ascetic lifestyle of penance - something all Christians are called to since John the Baptist and Jesus. When they are done purifying their own shortcomings they continue with penances for the sake of the rest of humanity. Like Jesus and his apostles (and like serious practitioners of many other religions) they voluntarily take on what would be hardship to others and use it to transform themselves and others. The practices and life style are comparable to Buddhist bodhisattvas purifying the karma of all sentient beings.
Cynthia Bourgeault wrote probably the most balanced book on everything to do with Mary Magdalene. She too sees advantages in Mary Magdalene’s denotation as a penitent prostitute and says: “God sometimes writes straight with crooked lines”.¹⁰
Goddess of Love: Aphrodite, Mary Magdalene or the Virgin Mary?
Whatever Magdalene is repentant for, in Christian art it is not for being sensuous. Here she is pressing Jesus on the cross against her naked bosom. "The Penitent Magdalene" by Paolo Pagani (c.1661-1716)
To me Mary Magdalene and Mother Mary are like Isis and her sister Nephtys (Greek) or Nebthet (Egyptian). Isis was more famous, more important, more powerful. But she had a sister who was her complementary opposite. Isis was the day, life, fertility; Nephtys the night, death, barrenness. Yet they decided to work together for the greater good and gradually Isis incorporated all the attributes of her sister.
Similarly, the Virgin Mary has this spiritual sister Magdalene. One is purity, virginity, obedience, silent humility. The other is passion, sexuality, loudly outrageous and shamelessly non-conforming. Once the virgin and the whore Mary were paired up as a suitable couple of sisters in the Spirit, the Virgin started to claim her sexuality and the whore her saintliness.¹¹
In medieval art and thinking Mother Mary had to fulfill all the old roles of the goddesses. That meant she was responsible for everything to do with a woman's life: love, passion, fertility, childbearing, praying, and dying.
Mother Mary's role as the Christian goddess of love was expressed in three symbols: the red rose, the unicorn, and the color red.
1. Since ancient times the red rose was a symbol of the goddess Venus and erotic love. The vagina was often referred to as 'the little rose beneath the rosebush'. In the Middle Ages, with its troubadours spreading a culture of refined and spiritual love and with the crusaders emphasizing self-sacrificial love, the rose conquered the imagination of European Christians. It became one of the favorite symbols of human and divine, romantic and spiritual love. Mother Mary became known as the 'mystical rose' and her chaplet of prayers as the 'rosary', a collection of roses. To this day it is said that each time someone prays the rosary, Mary is crowned with a fresh crown of roses, i.e. with the power of love and femininity.
2. Mary and the unicorn were often portrayed in an enclosed garden. According to myth only a pure virgin (the enclosed garden symbolized her virginal womb)¹²
could capture a unicorn. The powerfully good, yet fiercely wild animal could not be killed by hunters unless it came across a pure virgin. Then it would lay its head in her lap and fall asleep. At that point its pursuers would strike.
In the Christian context this story came to mean that the fierce, male God could only be bound in this world, tamed, and made docile by the exceedingly pure and docile Virgin Mary. Once he entered her womb and became Jesus Christ he could be sacrificed as the Lamb of God for the good of all.
But the unicorn also retained its worldly aspect. It represented wild, ferocious manhood that could only be tamed by pure womanhood and would gladly allow itself to be trapped into holy matrimony and made docile. In that context the Virgin Mary represented virtuous womanhood taming wild manhood and channeling erotic passion into the 'sacrament of marriage'.¹³
3. Mother Mary's passionate love also came to be represented by the red robes under her blue mantel. Apparently people felt so justified in their sexual passions by Mary's red robes that during the Renaissance the church decided to put an end to Mother Mary as the goddess of love. Suddenly she was not allowed to be portrayed in red anymore, and no more unicorns either. In 1563, the Council of Trent condemned all associations of the Virgin Mary with the unicorn and henceforth only virginal white veils and heavenly blue mantels were permitted.
That's when the two Marys, who had become one, were separated out again and the responsibility of holding a space for human sexuality fell solely onto the beautiful, naked shoulders and the red open hair of Mary Magdalene.
I like the two aspects in one figure, and I find the Virgin Mary to be quite efficacious in blessing the sexual union of husband and wife with a cosmic passion. Unfortunately, we don't have a goddess of human love in Christianity. We miss the Aphrodite archetype. The closest we can come to it is in the idea of the good prostitute, which in a Christian context can only mean a former, repentant prostitute, a sensuous, passionate saint like Mary Magdalene.
I agree that 'Aphrodite' is a much nicer name for the archetype 'goddess of love' than 'repentant prostitute'. But since Aphrodite is a Greek goddess, we may just have to realize that Mary Magdalene is the Christian form of Aphrodite, the same archetype by a different name.
Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code"
Though I was not impressed with the book, I loved the movie.
Certainly, if Jesus had married, it would have been Mary Magdalene. In the Bible as well as in art, she is consistently portrayed as his closest female disciple, a very intimate one with definite romantic overtones. Many depictions of the crucifixion show her wrapped around the cross of Christ in such a physically intimate way that the message can't be overlooked: Jesus and Mary Magdalene were somehow a couple.
Jewish custom did indeed dictate that a Rabbi had to be married and Jesus was called Rabbi on several occasions. But Jewish custom also said that once a man was married, he was not to speak to any women besides his wife and immediate family. Jesus, on the other hand, made a point of talking to many women and of not worrying too much about laws and customs. We know for sure that the apostle Paul was not married and even so, contrary to Jewish custom, did teach in synagogues. We also know that both, being married and being celibate were completely acceptable options for leaders in the early church.
Hence, we may never know for sure if Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and if they had children, but I don't think it makes nearly as much of a difference as Dan Brown suggests. Jesus' message doesn't hinge on that. But there certainly is a lot more evidence that Jesus was celibate than that he was married. To give only one example: in Matthew 19:11-12 Jesus says that forsaking marriage for the sake of the kingdom of God is a mystery many practice, but many others with inferior capacities cannot grasp.
Even if Jesus had children, they wouldn't necessarily have been important. As he says in Mat 13:50, and in the other gospels: those who do the will of his heavenly father are his family. Certainly his apostles must have had children, but they are never mentioned anywhere. Remember, we are talking about religion here, and about the kingdom of God, not about worldly royal bloodlines and kingdoms who usually ended up with imbeciles because of inbreeding.
Other religious founders had children who played no important role in history. Buddha's son wasn't particularly special and died at an early age. In Islam only the Shiite minority took Mohammed's bloodline into account when determining its leadership. Judaism certainly venerates its bloodline of patriarchs, yet the prophets whom God established as the spiritual leaders were independent of any bloodline. Lord Krishna, the Hindu god of love, must have had thousands of children because he is said to have had 16,000 queens, plus consorts! Yet I've never heard his children mentioned anywhere. Historically, only the leadership of the Bahai was passed from father to son. So it seems that spiritual enlightenment does not normally transfer with the DNA.
But if you're looking for divinity in someone's DNA, that's an easy find, because we're all created by God and in God's image by receiving His breath, i.e. spirit. Hence, it seems to me that the whole human race is of God's bloodline.
Concerning the supposed motivation (according to "The Da Vinci Code") for concealing Jesus' marriage: Dan Brown says that it was the Catholic Church's effort to portray Jesus as purely divine and not human. Actually, the Church insisted from the start that Jesus was both human and divine.
It argued against the Gnostics who would take away from Jesus' humanness by saying that he didn't really suffer on the cross, because God doesn't suffer. It also argued against those who would diminish his divinity by teaching that Jesus started out as an ordinary human and only later became the Son of God.
Only it wasn't until the council of Ephesus (431 C.E.) that the Church could agree precisely how divine and how human Jesus Christ was at any given point in time, and how those "two natures" co-exist.
In my opinion the "two natures of Christ" are the very core and gem of Christianity. It is rare to find another religion that gives us permission to be, like Jesus, truly human and truly divine. Mystical Christianity does.
Rather than hurting the veneration of the "divine feminine", insisting that Jesus was "truly human and truly divine" from the moment of his conception, actually gave it a great boost. For it justified the veneration of the Virgin Mary as Mother of God.
What is certainly true is that at a certain point the Church started suppressing anything that supported women's full participation in the Church. But that sharing of ministry and power did not depend on the supposed descendants of Mary Magdalene and Jesus. Rather it would have been quite sufficient to faithfully emulate Jesus and Paul (on a good day!). But instead, Jesus' own relationship with the many women in his life was ignored and to Paul's true letters, fake, misogynistic ones were added. (see: my article on "Women of Spirit and Power in the Bible", especially the section "the Woman who Anointed Jesus")
And the Holy Grail? In the movie it is described as "the source of God's power on earth". - If Jesus is God's power on earth then Mary, his mother, could be seen as his source. Indeed, to me much of what the movie says about Mary Magdalene is more true about the Virgin Mary. Loius Charpentier in his book "Les Mysteres de la Cathedrale de Chartres" explains that the Knights Templar went to Jerusalem, not to seek the Holy Grail, but the Ark of the Covenant, which they hoped to find in the ruins of the Temple of Solomon. Charpentier says, that they certainly did find an esoteric knowledge and a source of power and wealth that enabled them suddenly to create gothic cathedrals. Maybe so, but along with that knowledge they found Black Madonnas (see my article) and they venerated their Dark Mothers in those cathedrals.
From of old Mother Mary was given the title "Ark of the Covenant", because she was the vessel of the New Covenant: Jesus Christ. To her the Templars dedicated their order, their cathedrals, and their hearts.
Mary Magdalene Pilgrimage Sites
1. Ephesus: Donald Carroll states the following in his book "Mary's House: The extraordinary story behind the discovery of the house where the Virgin Mary lived and died" on pages 78-80: "In 1952 a large sarcophagus was unearthed near the entrance of a grotto on the outskirts of Ephesus known as the Cave of the Seven Sleepers, so-called because of an ancient Christian legend attached to it. The sarcophagus was positively identified by Professor Louis Massignon of the College de France as the tomb of Mary Magdalene. The bones were removed and are now in the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Paris. (Read more about Mary's house in Ephesus in the "Mother Mary and the Goddess" article.)
2. So Paris is interesting both because of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene and because of the sanctuary and apparition site of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal in the Rue du Bac. The shell of Magdalene's church (L'eglise de Sainte Madeleine) is a very big reproduction of a Greek temple that has long housed what is claimed to be the thigh bone of Mary Magdalene, but which did not come from the excavations in Ephesus. When I was there in 2006 I did not find any other remains of Magdalene and the local custodian assured me there are no others kept at the church. Later I found out though that the church has a crypt (which I didn't see). Who knows what they are hiding down there!
3. Sainte-Baume is a beautiful place in Southern France, where the Magdalene is said to have spent the last 30 years of her life as a hermit. There is other evidence that she lived with Mother Mary and John in their home in Ephesus after the crucifixion of Christ. However, it is conceivable that she also traveled to France. After all Jesus had urged his apostles and disciples to emulate his wandering as a homeless beggar. In any case, a site where a saint has been honored and invoked for roughly a thousand years is sure to be filled with her blessing presence. To this day there is a lived tradition of devotion to Mary Magdalene at Sainte-Baume, and, as an exhibit in the Dominican monastery that guards her shrine states, the enchanting woods leading to her cave-hermitage were already regarded as a sacred goddess site in pre-Christian times.
Footnotes:
1. See Karen King, the Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle, Polebridge Press, Santa Rosa, CA: 2003, p. 14
2. St. Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians says: “Now you are the body of Christ, and each of you is a member of it.” verse 12:27
[i] Mary Ann Beavis, Reconsidering Mary of Bethany, in The Catholic Biblical Quarterly Vol. 74, No. 2 (April 2012), 286–87 p. 47 writes: “Luke’s observation that Mary was “the one called Magdalene” (8:2) suggests that µαγδαληνη was a nickname or title from the Aramaic magdala (“Mary the Tower” or “Mary the Great”).”
[ii] The Bible itself warns of people changing stories, because it was done. E.g. Revelation 22:18-19 says: “ For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
[iii] Peter goes on to argue that Sarah referring to Abraham as ‘my lord’ means she was submissive under him, but his equal business partners also called him that (Genesis 23:6+15). It must have just been the polite way of addressing a man of his stature.
[iv] Tertullian, Treatise against Praxeas (ed. and trans. Ernest Evans; London: SPCK, 1948) 84, 117n. Only a 16th-cent. printed edition names Martha. Evans attributes it to a slip of Tertullian’s memory (see ibid., 304), quoted in Schrader’s article p. 36.
[v] Schrader, op. cit. p .45
[vi] Ibid. p.46 and pp. 12–13 and 16 in Mark Goodacre’s article
[vii] François Bovon, “Le privilège pascal de Marie-Madeleine,” NTS 30 [1984] 50– 62, at 53, quoted in ibid. p. 51
Cf. Mark 16:13: “….but they did not believe them either.”
[viii] In a Youtube video of Sensus Fidelium, by Dom Prosper Guéranger, entitled: St Mary Magdalene, Penitent (22 July)
[ix] Graham Brock shows convincingly in her book Mary Magdalene, the First Apostle: the Struggle for Authority, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts: 2003
4. Verse 114, The Gospel of Thomas: the Gnostic Wisdom of Jesus, translated by Jean-Yves Leloup, Inner Traditions, Rochester: 2005, p.57
5. Ibid p. 19
6. James M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library, Harper & Row, San Francisco: 1977, p. 237
7. Several people talk about this including Esther de Boer in her, The Gospel of Mary, Listening to the Beloved Disciple, Bloomsbury Publishing: 2005
8. Schrader, Elizabeth, Was Martha of Bethany Added to the Fourth Gospel in the Second Century? Harvard Theological Review 110, no. 3 (July 2017), pp. 360–392.
9. Ann Graham Brock Mary Magdalene, The First Apostle, The Struggle for Authority 2004 pp124-9
10. Cynthia Bourgeault, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity, Shambhala Publications, Boston: 2010, p. 27
11. Cf. Charlene Spretnak, Missing Mary, Palgrave McMillan, New York: 2004, pp. 211-13
12. This symbolism goes back to the Song of Songs.
13. A sacrament is an "efficacious sign of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us." See: Sacraments of the Catholic Church For further info see Kayleen Asbo's great website.
