This post may contain affiliate links
July 22nd is the Feast day of Mary Magdalene, celebrated by the Catholic Tradition, and pilgrims of Mary Magdalene around the world. So who is Mary Magdalene, and why does it matter to us today?
She was the first to witness the resurrection, so she is revered in Christianity as the Apostle to the Apostles. In some ancient Hebrew cultures, her name, Mary, meant Rabi or teacher, and she was perhaps seen as an equal partner and leading apostle in the earliest Christian movement. History also tells us that she was a highly esteemed Jewish woman who was part of Jesus’ ministry and traveled with him.
Even so, there is so much we don’t know about Mary, and yet, through the four gospels included in the ancient scriptures, this is what we do know:
Mary was…
- The last to leave the cross
- The one who stood vigil at the tomb.
- The first one to see the tomb empty.
- The first one to be told to preach the message that he had risen.
- The first and only disciple to truly understand and activate the teachings of Jesus.
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene shares that Jesus came to unite us, to demonstrate to us a true human being, an Anthropos, meaning a person who is both fully human and fully divine. This is what Mary became, and it’s why she was so beloved by Jesus. She didn’t seek to follow him; she sought instead to become her true self. Mary saw herself as the bridge between heaven and earth. The Christ in you, the hope of glory.
In my quest to understand who I am and step into who I’m becoming, I’ve done a lot of research and learned about Mary Magdalene, and her lost Gospel, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. According to Meggan Watterson, author of Mary Magdalene Revealed,
“Starting in the 4th century, the formation of the traditional bible, all of the gospels that confirmed Mary’s spiritual authority and unique relationship with Christ were excluded from the canon and deemed “heretical,” like the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Thomas. And the scriptures that confirmed and validated women’s leadership in the earliest forms of Christianity, like the Acts of Paul and Thecla, were also excluded.”
As time passed, the identity of Mary Magdalene was re-written as a sinful woman. In the 6th century, Pope Gregory I, in his Homily 33, depicted her as the Mary in Luke 8 and Mark 16 as the woman freed of all her demons by Christ. According to his interpretation, this confirmed that Mary’s sinfulness had to do with her sexuality, and those seven demons set her up to be the prostitute, the repentant whore.
“This interpretation of Mary had an obvious agenda: reinforce the view that women were to be seen primarily in terms of their sexuality and not their spiritual nature.” As Cynthia Bourgeault explains, “The shadow side of Christianity’s notoriously undealt-with issues around human sexuality and the feminine get projected directly onto her.”
Why does all this matter, and what or who does Mary Magdalene represent for us today?
Perhaps Mary Magdalene is the one who represents to us the beauty of the masculine and feminine energy at work together and a return back to balance. Or where all people are reconnected with the sacred wisdom of their soul and learn to respect the feminine’s sacredness, wisdom, and power again.
Maybe Mary Magdalene is telling us it is now safe to come out of hiding and share our voices. To recalibrate ourselves as women and become deeply devoted believers whose faith is extravagant and unshakeable. A woman who is neither saint nor whore, but just IS; fully human and fully divine.
I believe that she wants us to remember that the truest church we can ever enter is in the heart. This is where our true power rests. Where the realm of Heaven eternally exists, because love never ends.
