Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene
Today is the Feast of St Mary Magdalene, a beautiful day to focus on our belovedness as daughters and sons of God. Early in his ministry, Jesus delivered Mary from seven demons (Luke 8:2), setting her free from a life of torment, liberating her to truly live as God’s beloved. Mary devoted herself to Christ as one of his disciples, awakened to the extravagance of God’s love for her and no doubt motivated by an inexplicable gratitude for Christ’s mercy and compassion. As we look to her example today, let us ask her intercession that we, like she, might awaken to recognize more and more the extravagant love of God. May we walk through this day recognizing our belovedness and allowing the overwhelming love of God to consume us more fully in our hearts, our minds, our souls, and our bodies.
Today’s readings bring to mind three of the ways Christ relates to us – as Lover, Healer, and Brother. Song of Songs is a passionate love letter to us from God. Picture the scene depicted in the first reading and imagine yourself waking in the night and discovering your spouse is inexplicably gone. Imagine the fear, the uncertainty, sense of loss, panic, desperation. We are the Bride of Christ. Jesus desires to love us with spousal love, Jesus longs for us to know his passionate, fiery, unconditional love – to really know the depth of our belovedness. This type of love is not just known intellectually, it is embodied, we feel it in our bodies, it sets our hearts on fire, it magnifies our souls. We need the security of Christ’s love. The alternative is the picture painted by the desperate lover in today’s first passage. Today, let us ask Jesus to show us more of the depth of his love for us; let us risk opening ourselves up more fully to receive Christ’s love.
Imagine being set free from the oppression and torment of seven demons! Mary experienced the power of God in Christ in a truly remarkable and miraculous manner. While we may not have this kind of testimony to share, each of us in our own way has experienced the healing touch of God. We each are in need of God’s healing in some way today – perhaps physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, or in our relationships. Our psalm today offers a way for us to connect with our profound need for God and helps us to voice our prayer of supplication. O God, you are my God whom I seek; for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water. Today, as we come before God in our brokenness, our woundedness, our infirmity, let us place the parched earth of our being at the feet of Jesus asking him for mercy and grace. We pray in confidence knowing that God’s kindess is a greater good than life, and that as with the riches of a banquet shall our souls be satisfied.
As Mary Magdalene sat weeping, lost in her devastating grief outside the empty tomb, Jesus comes to her as loving Friend and greets her as his beloved. Imagine the tenderness in his greeting as he simply speaks her name, Mary! Jesus then reveals an extraordinary, mind-blowing expansion of the relationship – in Christ’s Resurrection, Mary is now his sister; the other disciples are now his brothers! Jesus tells her, go to my brothers and tell them, “I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Jesus had referred to God as his father on numerous occasions previously, but now the circle of the Holy Trinity opens to each of us. As the alternative first reading makes clear, in Christ we are new creations, we are children of God, sisters and brothers of Christ. St Paul writes, the love of Christ impels us . . . that verse could also be translated compels us. Christ’s unconditional love is a powerful, irresistible force within us, an overwhelming influence, an inner drive, a constraining propulsion. As we awaken more and more to the reality of God’s love for us in Christ and surrender to it, that unconditional agape will not only define us, it will consume us.
Today, I pray that like Mary Magdalene we will be consumed by God’s passionate, relentless, unconditional love. Today, let us seek to know Christ even a little more fully as Lover, Healer, and Brother. May we allow God’s love, mercy, and grace to flow into the parched areas of our souls and our lives. May we silence, in the Name of Jesus, any lying voice that would seek to tell us that we are anything other than God’s beloved. Friends, secure in your belovedness, as the psalmist sang, may you shout for joy in the shadow of God’s protective wings. Amen!
- Elizabeth Wourms