St.
Mary Magdalen - Mary of MAGDALA.
Mary Magdalen was so called either from Magdala near Tiberias, on the west
shore of Galilee,
or possibly from a Talmudic expression
meaning "curling women's hair,"
which the Talmud explains
as of an adulteress.
The Greek Fathers, as a whole,
distinguish the three persons:
On the other hand most of the Latins hold that
these three were one and the same. Most critics, however, believe there
were two, if not three, distinct persons. It is
impossible to demonstrate the identity of the three. Or was it just one person,
who had three distinct personalities? In todays world she would have been
looked at as someone ill, with a Multiple personality disorder. The Jewish
society too didn't help, women had no rights, and were treated more like
possessions or commodities. Their views, opinions or independence were not
respected in society. Mary is different, she challenges the Jewish society,
rebels against its age old customs and traditions, and pays a heavy price for
it.
The price was huge, the ransom great, no one could bail her
out. Not even her brother Lazarus, or the many men she trusted her life with.
Thus guilty of capital punishment, when brought to Jesus, the High Priest, the
Just Judge, the one who knows all things, sees all things, from the time of her
conception, she is finally given a fair hearing.
A judgement is passed, Christ is found writing on the earth,
when questioned by her accusers, ready with stones in their hand to kill her.
Guilty, Yes, Criminal Yes, Under the Jewish law we find her both guilty and
worthy of being called a Criminal, but when Jesus Christ, King of the Jews
declares the Final Judgement, everyone
is suprised. Jesus passes Judgement as the Just Judge, and finds all mankind
guilty of sin, For All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God.
Its only when we stop looking at the speck in the other
persons eye, can we see how truly blind we actually are. Its only then we realise our vision is so
skewed, so warped that its obscured not by a splinter but a LOG in our ?eye.
Judge not and you shall not be Judged! Make peace, with Jesus Christ the Just
Judge before the second comming, the final Day of Judgement, while he currently
reigns as King of Mercy, Price of Peace.
He did say He has come to cast fire on the earth, a fire that
consumes not only the body, but the mind and the soul, and How he wished 2020
years ago that it were already burning. He did mention he will set son against
father, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law, but yet he is also called One
God, with a fractured Church.
How do we reconcile this disunity with Christ constant call
to Unity? Christ established just one Church, which today is fractured into
infinite denominations. Which is the church that Christ truly founded? Is it
the Roman Catholic Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Protestant Churches
or is the various Churches that mushroom everywhere, professing Christ Yes,
preaching the Gospel Yes, however, they Profess with their lips but their
hearts are far from it. Are we guilty of preaching a Gospel that we don't
follow first?
St. Francis rightly said, "Preach the Gospel always, if
necessary use words". So let your lives be a living sacrifice, a pleasing
odour to God. And may Christ, be preached, professed and lived in your lives
first. Let us be the Branch that bears much fruit as it abides in Jesus, the
real vine. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you you will bear much
fruit. Is your church thriving, struggling or flourishing? The litmus test is
the Fruit of the Spirit. Many are the gifts and few are the fruits of the Holy
Spirit. Many have the gifts, few have the Fruit. If your ministry or church
only has the gift and flowers but no fruit, like the Fig tree that was cursed,
it will wither and die as its not rooted in the Gospel that Jesus Christ
Preached.
One bread, One Body, One Church, One Gospel: Which is that
Church, which is that Gospel?
Which is the Gospel that Jesus Preached 2020 years ago?
Sadly, we didn't have the todays technology back then, and the old technology
that did capture it, is terribly out dated, unreliable and unbelievable. The
Warranty has expired long ago and most of human kind has lost faith. Today we
have so many versions of the Gosple being preached, as for me i'd like to go
back to the roots and research for myself, and find the writings of the early
church fathers, who gave up their lives that the TRUTH be preserved.
Can we look for the truth and yet not find it? Yes, Jesus
bore witness to the TRUTH, but that truth was rejected buy the whole world. We
all are guilty of SIN, I nailed Jesus to the Cross of Calvary, if not me then
who?
I am guilty of sin, Yes I am also redeemed by the blood of
the Lamb. I am made whiter than snow, but every white cloth attracts dirt in a
dirty dusty world. WE have to be cleaned and bleached frequently. Once saved,
forever saved. Yes. Work out your salvation with FEAR & TREMBLING. Do not
throw away the BAPTISIMAL GIFT of ETERNAL LIFE. Every Sin deserves death and
punishment, Jesus Christ, destroyed Death once and for all, so all BAPTISED are
saved. However there is a Just Judgement coming, are we prepared for it?
Have you been to Jesus for the Cleansing rite?
Are you washed in the Blood of the Lamb? Are your garments
spotless are they white as snow, are you washed in the Blood of the Lamb.
Are you washed, in the soul cleansing blood of the lamb, even
if your garments were spotless and bleached white, are they still white? Are
they washed free of MORTAL SIN? The small weak stains don't need bleaching,
VENIAL SIN is easily forgiven, STUBBORN SINS need bleaching, Even if there is
ONE STUBBORN STAIN on your garment, its not white all over.
Please work out your salvation with FEAR & TREMBLING, do
not take your GIFT of eternal LIFE for granted. Confess your sins to all, and
come clean, before your ACCUSER drags you to COURT! Please push for an OUT OF
COURT SETTLEMENT, strive hard for PEACE, while JESUS REIGNS as CHRIST THE KING,
the King of MERCY, the PRINCE OF PEACE!
Do not drag anyone to court with HARD EVIDENCE, least they
raise their cry to JESUS CHRIST the JUST JUDGE, who will hear their cry and
find all GUILTY. Let us back off, and stop accusing the guilty, the victims in
society. Let us build a society of JUSTICE & PEACE.
Magdalene, A sinner, a woman possessed with 7
demons
In the New Testament she
is mentioned among the women who
accompanied Christ and
ministered to Him (Luke
8:2-3), where it is also said that seven devils had
been cast out of
her (Mark 16:9).
It is the identification of Mary of Bethany with the
"sinner" of Luke 7:37, which is
most combatted contested. It almost seems as if this reluctance to identify the
"sinner" with the sister of Martha were due to
a failure to grasp the full significance of the forgiveness of sin.
The first fact, mentioned in the Gospel relating to
the question under discussion is the anointing of Christ's feet by
a woman, a
"sinner" in the city (Luke 7:37-50). This
belongs to the Galilean ministry,
it precedes the miracle of
the feeding of the five thousand and the third Passover. Immediately
afterwards St. Luke describes
a missionary circuit in Galilee and tells
us of the women who
ministered to Christ,
among them being "Mary who is called Magdalen, out of whom seven devils were gone forth" (Luke 8:2); but he
does not tell us that she is to be identified with the "sinner" of
the previous chapter.
In 10:38-42, Luke
tells us of Christ's visit
to Martha and
Mary "in a certain town"; it is impossible to identify this town, but
it is clear from 9:53,
that Christ had
definitively left Galilee,
and it is quite possible that this "town" was Bethany. This seems
confirmed by the preceding parable of
the good Samaritan, which must
almost certainly have been spoken on the road between Jericho and Jerusalem. But here
again we note that there is no suggestion of an identification of the
three persons (the
"sinner", Mary Magdalen, and Mary of Bethany), and if we had
only St. Luke to
guide us we should certainly have no grounds for so identifying them.
St.
John, however, clearly identifies Mary of Bethany with the woman who
anointed Christ's feet
(12; cf. Matthew 26 and Mark 14). It is
remarkable that already in 11:2, St. John has spoken
of Mary as "she that anointed the Lord's feet", he aleipsasa; It is commonly said that he
refers to the subsequent anointing which he himself describes in 12:3-8; but it may
be questioned whether he would have used he
aleipsasa if another woman, and she a
"sinner" in the city, had done the same. It is conceivable that St. John, just because
he is writing so long after the event and at a time when Mary was dead, wishes
to point out to us that she was really the same as the "sinner."
In the same way St. Luke may have
veiled her identity precisely because he did not wish to defame one who was yet
living; he certainly does something similar in the case of St. Matthew whose
identity with Levi the publican (5:7) he conceals.
If the foregoing argument holds good, Mary of Bethany and the
"sinner" are one and the same. But an examination of St. John's Gospel makes
it almost impossible to deny the identity of Mary of Bethany with Mary
Magdalen. From St.
John we learn the name of the "woman" who
anointed Christ's feet
previous to the last
supper. We may remark here that it seems unnecessary to hold that
because St. Matthew and St. Mark say
"two days before the Passover",
while St. John says
"six days" there were, therefore, two distinct annointings following
one another.
St.
John does not necessarily mean that the supper and the
anointing took place six days before, but only that Christ came
to Bethany six
days before the Passover.
At that supper,
then, Mary received the glorious encomium, "she hath wrought a good work upon Me . . .
in pouring this ointment upon My body she hath done it for My burial . . .
wheresoever this Gospel shall
be preached . . . that also which she hath done shall be told for a memory of
her."
Magdalene, A new confident, independent, woman
with a Mind of her own.
She is next named as standing at the foot of the cross (Mark 15:40; Matthew 27:56; John 19:25; Luke 23:49). She
saw Christ laid
in the tomb, and
she was the first recorded witness of the Resurrection.
Is it credible, in view of all this, that this Mary should
have no place at the foot of the cross, nor at the tomb of Christ? Yet it
is Mary Magdalen who, according to all the Evangelists, stood at
the foot of the cross and
assisted at the entombment and was the first recorded witness of the Resurrection. And
while St. John calls
her "Mary Magdalen" in 19:25, 20:1, and 20:18, he calls her
simply "Mary" in 20:11 and 20:16.
In the view we have advocated the series of events forms a
consistent whole; the "sinner" comes early in the ministry to seek
for pardon; she is described immediately afterwards as Mary Magdalen "out
of whom seven devils were
gone forth"; shortly after, we find her "sitting at the Lord's feet and
hearing His words." To the Catholic mind it
all seems fitting and natural. At a later period Mary and Martha turn to
"the Christ,
the Son of the
Living God", and He restores to them their brother Lazarus; a short time
afterwards they make Him a supper and Mary once more repeats the act she had
performed when a penitent. At the Passion she stands
near by; she sees Him laid in the tomb; and she is the
first witness of His Resurrection--excepting
always His Mother,
to whom He must needs have appeared first, though the New Testament is
silent on this point. In our view, then, there were two anointings of Christ's feet--it
should surely be no difficulty that St. Matthew and St. Mark speak of
His head--the first (Luke
7) took place at a comparatively early date; the second, two days before
the last Passover.
But it was one and the same woman who performed
this pious act on
each occasion.
Subsequent history of St. Mary Magdalene
The Greek
Church maintains that the saint retired to Ephesus with the Blessed Virgin and
there died, that her relics were
transferred to Constantinople in 886 and are there preserved. Gregory of Tours (De miraculis, I, xxx) supports the statement
that she went to Ephesus. However, according to a French tradition
(see SAINT LAZARUS
OF BETHANY), Mary, Lazarus, and some
companions came to Marseilles and converted the whole
of Provence. Magdalen is said to have retired to a hill, La Sainte-Baume, near
by, where she gave herself up to a life of penance for thirty
years. When the time of her death arrived she was carried by angels to Aix and into
the oratory of
St. Maximinus, where she received the viaticum; her body was
then laid in
an oratory constructed
by St. Maximinus at Villa Lata, afterwards called St. Maximin. History is silent
about these relics till
745, when according to the chronicler Sigebert, they were
removed to Vézelay through fear of the Saracens. No record is
preserved of their return, but in 1279, when Charles II, King of Naples, erected a convent at La
Sainte-Baume for the Dominicans,
the shrine was found intact, with an inscription stating why they were hidden.
In 1600 the relics were
placed in a sarcophagus sent by Clement VIII, the head
being placed in a separate vessel. In 1814 the church of La Sainte-Baume,
wrecked during the Revolution,
was restored, and in 1822 the grotto was consecrated afresh.
The head of the saint now
lies there, where it has lain so long, and where it has been the centre of so
many pilgrimages.
Sources: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09761a.htm
