Notes on Mary Magdalene

"Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’  She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher)."

John 20:16

"Noli me tangere," Exultet Roll, Abbey of Montecasino

I

"Then the disciples returned to their homes.  But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb" (John 20:10–11):  Whether or not she was the woman who washed Jesus' feet with her tears (Lk. 7:38), it is certainly true that she, "from whom seven demons had gone out" (8:2), loved much (7:47).  Mary Magdalene loved much; she was one of the few who followed Jesus to the end, and was standing near his cross when he died (Jn. 19:25).  She came early on the morning to his tomb because her grief was boundless at the loss of the one whom she loved much.

The ambiguous sign of the empty tomb could not console her.  It signified only a double loss, for no she no longer knew where the body of the one whom she had loved was laid (Jn. 20:2).

She loved much, and so she stood weeping because it was beyond hope that she would see the one she loved again.  So when she saw him, she did not recognize him, thinking only of how she could find the one who had been twice taken from her.

II

Ludwig Wittgenstein:  “Perhaps we can say: Only love can believe the Resurrection.  Or:  It is love that believes in the Resurrection.  We might say: Redeeming love believes even in the Resurrection; holds fast even to the Resurrection.  What combats doubt is, as it were, redemption.  Holding fast to this must be holding fast to that belief.  So what that means is: first you must be redeemed and hold on to your redemption (keep hold of your redemption)—then you will see that you are holding fast to this belief.  So this can come about only if you no longer rest your weight on the earth but suspend yourself from heaven.  Then everything will be different and it will be ‘no wonder’ if you can do things that you cannot do now"  (Culture and Value, 32).

III

Only when she is called by her name does she recognize the risen Jesus.  She knew his voice (Jn. 10:27), the voice of the one she followed with such great love, the voice of her Teacher (20:16).  She hears the voice of love, which says, "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine" (Isa. 43:1)—and she believes in the Resurrection.

The Seven Last Words of Christ: The Seventh Word

"Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."

Luke 23:46

Bas-relief, Church of the Ascension of Christ in Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street,
"Church of the Small Ascension" (Moscow)

Christ Jesus, you had done nothing wrong (Lk. 23:41) and there was no deceit in your mouth, but you were condemned to death “by a perversion of justice” (Isa. 53:9, 8).  Righteous one, you suffered for us, the unrighteous (1 Pt. 3:18).  In you, the dawn from on high broke upon the shadow of death (Lk. 1:79), laying bare the dark recesses of human hearts, so you became a sign opposed by a generation under “the power of darkness” (2:34; 11:29; 22:53).  When “darkness came over the whole land...and the sun’s light failed” (Lk. 23:44–45), your righteous suffering threw the world's injustice into stark relief; even your executioner saw your innocence (23:47). 

Righteous one, when you were abused, you did not return abuse; when you suffered, you did not threaten; but you entrusted yourself to the one who judges justly (1 Pt. 2:23).  When you were “betrayed into human hands” (Lk. 9:49), you freely placed yourself into the hands of your Father.  When you—who were conceived by, lit upon and filled by, the Holy Spirit (Lk. 1:35; 3:22; 4:1)—commended your spirit to the Father, you were returning all that you are and have to the One who says to you, “‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased’.”*  

Child of the Lord’s handmaiden (Ps. 86:16; Lk. 1:38, 48), in the boundless depth of your self-offering, you perfectly express the prayer you gave your mother, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Lk. 1:38).  Son of Adam, Son of God (Lk. 3:38), when you presented yourself, “with loud cries and tears,” to the One who was able to save you from death (Heb. 5:7), you were the perfect prayer.  “All the troubles, for all time, of humanity enslaved by sin and death, all...petitions and intercessions,” are gathered in your cry.†  In your last words on the Cross, your prayer is the gift of your self.

* Lk. 3:22.  Cf. Raymond Brown, The Death of the Messiah, 2:1068.

† Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2606.

The Seven Last Words of Christ: The Sixth Word

"It is finished."

John 19:30

Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece (detail), 1515

Lord Christ, only Son of the Father, when you came down from heaven for us and our salvation, you glorified your Father by finishing the work he gave you to do (Jn. 17:4).  You are the mighty savior, born of the house of David, whom the Lord, the God of Israel, raised up to deliver his people and fulfill his promise of old to save your people from their enemies (Lk. 1:68–71).  When, in your steadfast love, you went down with Israel to Egypt to bring your people up again,* you “struck Egypt through their firstborn” (Ps. 136:10) but passed over the houses sprinkled with the blood of the lamb (Ex. 12:27).  When, “at the end of the age” (Heb. 9:26), you were lifted up and received the wine from the sponge put on hyssop, you appeared as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (Jn. 1:29).

Christ Jesus, when you came into the world, you came to do the will of him who sent you (Jn. 6:38).  You said to your Father, “See, I have come to do your will; I delight to do your will, O my God” (Heb. 10:7, 9; Ps. 40:8).  You will was perfect obedience to the Father, and “by that will we have been sanctified” through the offering of your body (Heb. 10:10), when, through the eternal Spirit you offered yourself without blemish to the Father (9:14).  By your humility we are cleansed,† because you emptied yourself and became obedient unto death, stretching out your arms on the cross, presenting your body as “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rom. 12:1).

Christ our Passover, you finished the work of love you were given to do; you were sacrificed for us (1 Cor. 5:7), and have taken away the sin of the world.  O Lamb that was slain, by your death, you have destroyed death, and by your rising to life again have restored to us everlasting life.‡

     Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, 
         miserere nobis.
     Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, 
         miserere nobis.
     Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, 
         dona nobis pacem.

* Gen. 46:4; Ps. 136:11.  Cf. Origen, In Gen. hom. 15:5, 6.

† Augustine, Io. ev. tr. 119.4.

‡ Proper Preface for Easter, The Book of Common Prayer.

The Seven Last Words of Christ: The Fifth Word

"I thirst.”  

John 19:28

Pablo Picasso, Crucifixion, 1930

Lord Jesus, what did you thirst for?  

Was your thirst to fulfill the psalmist’s prophecy (Jn. 19:28)?  

Were you thirsty for water?  Thirsty like a deer for water-brooks? like the Israelites in the wilderness? like the Samaritan woman at the well?  Did your tongue cleave to the roof of your mouth, dry as a potsherd (Ps. 22:15)?  Do the parched lips of your little ones—who wander in trackless wastes, in slums, in ghettoes—share in your thirst?

O Man of Thirst, what did you thirst for?  Did you also bear in your body (1 Pt. 2:24) our thirsts, our lusts?  Did you thirst like an alcoholic?  Like one thirsty for blood or power or revenge?  Did you bear in your body the burning, hissing cauldron of our illicit loves?*  Did you bear the thirst of those who scatter their streams of what in the streets (Pv. 5:15ff)? 

Fountain of living water, what did you thirst for?  Did you share the thirst of your people who dug, dig, will dig, cracked cisterns for themselves (Jer. 2:13)?  Were you thirsty for the Father?  Was the psalmist’s prayer also yours, “I spread out my hands to you; my soul gasps to you like a thirsty land” (Ps. 143:6)?  Were your arms spread out on the Cross to the Father?  Did you soul gasp to him?

How were you thirsty when your nourishment is to do the will of your Father, and here, on the Cross, you are most completely in obedience to him, even unto death?  Did you thirst for righteousness?  Or was love your thirst—love strong as death, which many waters could not quench (Cant. 8:7†)?

Lord, I do not know what you thirsted for, but I am—your whole creation is—thirsty for you.  Draw together our scattered thirsts that we might thirst only for you.  Quench our thirst, quench our thirst with the living water that flows from the deep well of your side.  Give us your overflowing wine to drink; we are athirst for you (Ps. 42:2).

* Augustine, Conf. 3.1.1
† cf. John Donne, “Death’s Duel”

The Seven Last Words of Christ: The Fourth Word

“Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?  My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34

Gaspar Núñez Delgado, Crucifix, 1599 (altered)

Man of sorrows, is there any sorrow like your sorrow, which was brought upon you (Lam. 1:12), when “darkness came over the whole land” (Mk. 15:33) on “a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness” (Joel 2:2)?  When, by a perversion of justice you were taken away and stricken for the transgression of your people (Isa. 53:8), all who saw you laughed you to scorn (Ps. 22:7).  You were become the laughing-stock of all your people (Lam. 3:14), and all those who passed by curled their lips and wagged their heads at you, saying, “He trusted in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, if he delights in him” (Ps. 22:7–8).  You were “scorned by all and despised by the people” (Ps. 22:6)—you who saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on you, who heard the voice from heaven say to you, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Mk. 1:10–11).

Man of sorrows, is there any sorrow like your sorrow?  We all had forsaken the Lord, “the fountain of living water,” and dug out cisterns for ourselves, “cracked cisterns that can hold no water” (Jer. 2:13), but, for our sake (2 Cor. 5:21), you were “poured out like water” (Ps. 22:14).  When the Lord laid on you “the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6), you bore our God-forsakenness.  

Beloved of the Father, was your cry of dereliction the fulfillment of what was said to the prophet: “I have forsaken my house, I have abandoned my heritage; I have given the beloved of my heart into the hands of her enemies” (Jer. 12:7)?  When you “cried out with a loud voice” (Mk. 15:34), did you cry out to God from the place of exile?

Man of sorrows, there is no sorrow like yours, for it is you, the beloved Son, who cry out, 

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? 
    Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? (Ps. 22:1)

The Seven Last Words of Christ: The Third Word

“Woman, behold your son! … Behold your mother!”

John 19:26–27

The Crucifixion, Icon, 15th c., Andrei Rublev Museum Moscow

Lord Jesus, eternally begotten of the Father, you were formed in the womb of your mother to be his servant (Isa. 49:5).  You are the Word he speaks, and when you took on your mother’s flesh, you heard him say to you, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified” (Isa. 49:3).  Before the hour had come for you to be glorified, she knew you would provide wine at the wedding feast; your mother told the servants to do whatever you told them (Jn. 2:5), because she had already said, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to you word” (Lk. 1:38, cf. 8:21).  She bore you in her womb and nursed you, and, although not even your brothers believed in you (Jn. 7:5), your mother followed you to the cross.  When your hour had come, and you were lifted up “to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel” (Isa. 49:6), she was standing near your cross.  She did not love her life, but followed you; where you were, there your servant was also (12:25–26).  Your mother received you, in whom is life, and you gave her power, through your Spirit, to become a child of God, to be “born from above” (Jn. 1:12; 3:3).  You call her, “Woman,” because, through you, she “has received a spirit of adoption” by which she cries, “‘Abba! Father!’,” bearing witness that she is a “joint heir” with you (Rom. 8:15–17).

Your mother did not come alone to stand near your cross; three other women—your “mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene”—were standing beside her, along with one man—the disciple whom you loved (Jn. 19:25–26).  Lord Christ, in your humble obedience, even on the cross, you did not look to your own interests, but to the interest of your mother and your beloved disciple (Phil. 2:4). You arranged that he should care for her as his mother, and take her into his own home (Jn. 19:27).  When you tell him, “Behold your mother!”, you reveal to him that your natural mother is his spiritual mother, because she is your first disciple.*  You are “in the bosom of the Father” (Jn. 1:18), and your beloved disciple reclined next to your heart at the supper in the Upper Room.  You make him, whose only relation to you is love, the son of your mother, who gave you her flesh.  Son of Mary, Son of God, you were lifted up from the earth “as a light to the nations” (Isa. 49:6) to draw all people to yourself (Jn. 12:32):

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways! To him be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.  (Rom. 11:33, 36)

* Cf. Raymond Brown, The Death of the Messiah, vol. II.

The Seven Last Words of Christ: The Second Word

“Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Luke 23:43

Francesco Allegrini (?), Christ Crucified with the Good Thief, 1615/20

Lord, when you were crucified with the criminals, “reckoned among the transgressors” (Lk. 22:37), you welcomed the thief as your companion.  You were despised and rejected by others, but he looked on you and desired that you remember him; they hid their faces from you, but he turned his face to you (cf. Isa. 53:2–3).  The foolish mocked you, “thou Wisdom from on high,” but you taught him the way of prudence, and, fearing you, he confessed.  The others proudly taunted you as the King of the Jews, but he meekly recognized you as having a kingdom.  He knew you—who were unjustly condemned—were justified when you spoke to him of his transgressions (Ps. 51:5, 3),   He heard your voice and his heart was not hard, and you brought him into your rest (Ps. 95:8, 11).

Loving him to the end, you rejoiced over his repentance, saying to him:

If you used once to be a companion of murderers, behold, I who am the life of all have now made you a companion with me. You used once to walk in the night with the sons of darkness; behold I who am the light of the whole world have now made you walk with me. You used once to take counsel with murderers; behold, I who am the Creator have made you a companion with me.*

Lord, he was hanging near to you on his cross, when you took him home from his long exile to Yourself.†  Merciful Jesus, number us also with him as your companion.

Through a tree Adam lost his home in paradise, but through the tree of the cross the thief came there to dwell.  By tasting of the fruit, the first broke the Creator's commandment, but He Who was crucified with You confessed You, the hidden God.  Remember us also, Savior, in Your kingdom!‡

Lifted up on the Cross, destroying the power of death and as God wiping out the record against us, O Lord, only Lover of humankind, grant the repentance of the Thief also to us who worship in faith, Christ our God, and who cry to you, ‘Remember us also, Saviour, in your kingdom.'‡

* Theophilus of Alexandria (385–412, Coptic), Homily on the Crucifixion and the Good Thief.
† Cf. Anselm of Canterbury, Twelfth Meditation, 59.
‡ From the Orthodox Matins on Holy and Great Friday (tr. Archimandrite Ephrem).

The Seven Last Words of Christ: The First Word

“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”  

Luke 23:34

Rembrandt van Rijn, Christ Crucified between Two Thieves (The Three Crosses), 1653-1655

Sovereign Lord, when “the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus” (Acts 4:27–28) and “killed the Author of life” (Acts 3:15), truly, they did not know what they were doing.  They were raging against you when they scorned your servant, but they did not know he is your Messiah, your chosen one (Lk. 23:35).  They took their stand against you when they abused “the King of the Jews” (Lk. 25:38), but they did not know you had given him “the throne of his ancestor David” (1:32).  When they condemned the one you ordained “as judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42), they “acted in ignorance” (3:17). They were sitting in darkness and the shadow of death when, through your tender mercy, your Dayspring visited them, to give them light and to guide their feet into the way of peace (Lk. 1:78–79).  But, Lord God of Israel, they did not perceive the Light you sent for their enlightenment and glory (Lk. 2:32).  Weeping over Jerusalem, your Light pronounced their doom:  “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes….because you did not recognize the time of your visitation” (Lk. 19:42, 44).  In their blindness, they did not know what they were doing—and in this way you fulfilled what you had foretold through all the prophets, that your Messiah would suffer (Acts 3:18).

Most merciful God, through the prayer of your Christ, you showed forth your goodness and loving-kindness to us.  “For the Word of God, who said to us, ‘Love your enemies, and pray for those that hate you,’ himself did this very thing upon the cross; loving the human race to such a degree, that he even prayed for those putting him to death” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.18).  In his prayer for his enemies, you reveal the riches of your “kindness and forbearance and patience,” showing us that your kindness is meant to lead us to repentance (Rom. 2:4).

Father of all mercies, deliver us from blindness and self-deception; help us to know what we are doing, willing, loving, that we might confess our sins to you.  Grant us true repentance through the gift of your Holy Spirit, that we might turn to you, who triumphed over the powers of darkness by the death of your servant Jesus, “in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:14, 2:15).

The Seven Last Words of Christ from the Cross

"And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." 

John 12:32

Volto di Christo (Face of Christ), Bose

Today marks the beginning of Holy Week, which "leads us behind Jesus 'the Righteous' in his Passion, Death, and Resurrection" (Monastero di Bose).  Especially this week, Christians seek to lift up our hearts to the Lord.  Beginning today, I will be sharing a series of meditations on the "Seven Last Words" of Jesus from the cross.  I share them with you in hopes that through them, he who was lifted up might draw you to himself.

The First Word

The Second Word

The Third Word

The Fourth Word

The Fifth Word

The Sixth Word

The Seventh Word

"Remembering Jerusalem"

The New Jerusalem as bride of the lamb, Walters Manuscript W.917, fol. 206v

One thing I asked of the Lord,
   that will I seek after:
to live in the house of the Lord
   all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord,
   and to inquire in his temple. (Ps. 27:4)

I will 'enter my chamber' and will sing you songs of love, groaning with inexpressible groanings on my wanderer's path, and remembering Jerusalem with my heart lifted up toward it--Jerusalem, my home land, Jerusalem, my mother, and above it yourself, ruler, illuminator, father, tutor, husband, pure and strong delights and solid joy and all good things to an unexpressible degree, all being enjoyed in simultaneity because you are the one supreme and true Good.  I shall not turn away until in that peace of this dearest mother, where are the firstfruits of my spirit and the source of my certainties, you gather all that I am from my dispersed and distorted state to reshape me and strengthen me for ever, 'my God my mercy.' (Augustine, Conf. 12.26.23, trans. H. Chadwick)

In the midst of defending his understanding of Genesis 1:1 as one of many true interpretations, Augustine is drawn into this rhapsodic confession.  He was considering whether it is true to interpret the "heavens" God created in the beginning as "the heaven of heavens," that is, Heaven, the spiritual House of God, wherein the beauty of the triune Lord is perpetually beheld.  And now, in the midst of defending his view against potential critics, he breaks off, suddenly, into a love song to his Lord.

Like the psalmist, the "one thing" Augustine asks is "to behold the beauty of the Lord" in his House (Ps. 27:4).  Wandering as he is in the world devastated by sin, he groans like one homesick to enter that state of rest and peace.  Now he is dispersed in the flux of time, finding himself tending toward nothingness.  Now he fleetingly knows the stability of that House, when he lifts up his heart contemplation or in the sursum corda of the liturgy.  But he longs for the Lord to gather his dispersed self together in the heavenly City, that he might "behold the beauty of the Lord" forever.

Augustine's desire is to find his rest, his fulfillment, his life, in the triune Lord.  His desire, to be sure, is to gaze upon the Creator, the Beauty of all things beautiful.  But it is also a desire to be gazed on as the Lord's beloved, and so to find himself gathered together, enfolded in the eternal embrace of Love.  Until that Day--when he will know, even as he has been known (1 Cor. 13:12)--, he will not be fully himself.

A Meditation for the Fourth Sunday in Lent

Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son (Detail)

When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. (Luke 15:14)

As usual, the Pharisees and the scribes are grumbling that Jesus is welcoming and eating with tax-collectors and sinners (Lk. 15:1–2).  So Jesus tells three stories about people rejoicing over finding something that was lost: a sheep, a silver coin, a son.  The three stories share a common, explicitly-stated theme: God delights in the repentance of those who wander from him (cf. vv. 7, 10).  Each story is also implicitly directed against the grumbling Pharisees and scribes, who like the elder son in the last story, are indignant (v. 28) at the welcome Jesus gives to the prodigals who come near to listen to him (v. 1).  Our Lord welcomes the tax-collectors and sinners because they come near to him, because they have felt their deathly hunger and come seeking nourishment from him, who is the bread of life.  Perhaps they are still a long way off, but he is running towards them.

Perhaps the story of the prodigal son is the paradigmatic story of conversion, metanoia.  At least it was for St. Augustine when, in his middle age, he reflected back on his life.*  He had been the prodigal son, turning away from God, becoming to himself “a region of destitution” (regio egestatis), of need, lack, poverty (Conf. 2.10.18).  As he confesses to God:

My hunger was internal, deprived of inward food, that is of you yourself, my God.  But that was not the kind of hunger I felt.  I was without any desire for incorruptible nourishment, not because I was replete with it, but the emptier I was, the more unappetizing such food became.  So my soul was in rotten health.  In an ulcerous condition it thrust itself to outward things, miserably avid to be scratched by contact with the world of senses. (Conf. 3.1.1)

Apart from the Creator, he could find no life in the created order, which had become to him “the region of death” (ibid., 4.12.18).

In that region of death, Augustine, as it were, heard the voice of the Lord Jesus, the Mediator, “he who for us is life itself [and who] descended here and endured our death and slew it by his abundance of life” (Conf. 4. 12.19).  In his hunger, he hears the voice of the Lord calling to him, “‘I am the food of the fully grown; grow and you will feed on me.  And you will not change me into you like the food your flesh eats, but you will be changed into me’” (ibid., 7.10.16).  

But Augustine does not find the growth that is required, until he begins to grow in humility by embracing “the humble Jesus” (ibid., 7.23.24).  As he despairs of his own strength and falls prostrate before “the divine weakness” of the Word become flesh, he finds true nourishment and rest.  Like the tax-collectors and sinners, Augustine finds himself welcomed by the humble Jesus when he humbly comes near to feed on him.  

With them, let us become weak, prostrating ourselves before the humble Lord that we might share in his life.

* Only retrospectively, in the light of grace, could Augustine see himself in the prodigal.  Barth: “Known sin is always forgiven sin, known in the light of forgiveness and the triumph of grace...Unforgiven sin, or sin not yet known to be forgiven, is always unrecognised sin. We repent only as we have already found the God of grace and realised that we are His creatures. Any other penitence moves hopelessly in a circle. For the knowledge of sin is itself an element in the knowledge of grace.” (CD 3.2, 36)

Moscow Map

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