MARY MAGDALENE

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JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR DID NOT DO MARY MAGDALENE’S SAUCY NOTORIETY ANY FAVOURS 

 by Richard Leonard |

Mary Magdalene should sue the Church for defamation. Never mind her being the apostle to the Apostles on Easter Day, since Tertullian in the third century her name has been synonymous with being a prostitute. 

Yet she is not like other women in the Gospels who have “a bad reputation in the town” or weep at Jesus’ feet and wipe their tears away with their hair, or are caught in the “very act of adultery” or pour oil over Jesus’ head.

The first that we hear of Mary Magdalene is that she has seven demons cast out of her by Jesus. We are not told what these demons are but, given what people wrongly thought at the time, they could have been a stomach complaint, acne or a twitch. There is no suggestion they were sexual demons.

Jesus Christ Superstar did not do Mary Magdalene’s saucy notoriety any favours by giving her the song of the show – “I don’t know how to love him”. 

Curiously some brides want this song sung at their weddings, to which I reply: “If you don’t know, you shouldn’t be here.” And think of the rest of the song’s chorus:
“And I’ve had so many men before, in very many ways … he’s just one more.”

I don’t think that’s what we want to say at a Nuptial Mass!

The most important thing we know about Mary Magdalene is that in three of the four Gospels she is the first to experience the Risen Christ and is the first Christian missionary, the apostle to the Apostles.

Two details in John’s account are especially poignant. We are told that Mary encountered the Risen Christ while weeping outside Jesus’ tomb. She felt a double loss on that first Easter Sunday. Not only was she grieving for the loss of the one whom she had seen tortured to death, but she also wept for what she thought was the ultimate insult inflicted on Him – the desecration of his grave and the stealing of his corpse.

Mary Magdalene is the patron saint of all those of us who have ever stood at tombs and wept. She shows us that in the middle of any grief Christ comes to us and calls us by name. Because of Mary’s tears, and even more because of her evangelisation, we believe that there is not a human being who is not known to God by name. 

Jesus tells Mary that his God and Father is now her God and Father. God makes no distinction between anyone; we are all called by name to share in his life according to the grace that enables us to do so. God not only knows our name; he knows our heart, our history, and our selves.

In the Easter accounts, Mary Magdalene is the first witness to the Resurrection. For us the word “witness” usually means someone who attests to the truth of events from personal experience and knowledge. The power of personal witness can hardly be exaggerated. 

The same is true of Christian faith today. Belief in Jesus Christ as Saviour of the world might seem a good idea or an engaging concept. But the best witnesses have first-hand access to the truth. 

They do not believe just in the idea of the Resurrection, but have had a personal encounter with the Risen Christ themselves, and are bold enough to proclaim and live it. This may be why in the early Church the word for “witness” and the word for “martyr” were one and the same. Anyone who was brave enough to publicly witness to the Resurrection at that time, could well end up giving his or her life for it.

Within a generation after Jesus’ death, people all over the Mediterranean world, most of whom had never seen Jesus, reported that they too had encountered the presence of the Risen Christ. 

Jesus of Nazareth was not dead, but alive to them too and these same people not only believed in the Resurrection, but also were prepared to put their lives on the line for the person they had encountered.

Nothing has changed. This Easter we are called to be witnesses to Jesus, raised from the dead, and alive to us here and now. In our own way we are meant to put our bodies on the line for it.

Like Mary Magdalene, in our witness to Christ, we will have to pay a price for how we live and whom we challenge. 

Richard Leonard SJ is the author of What are we hoping for? Reflections for Lent and Easter (Alban Books). 

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FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER Year "C"

Fourth Sunday of Easter
Scripture from today's Liturgy of the Word
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/041716.cfm

Acts 13:14, 43-52
Psalm 100:1-2, 3, 5
Revelation 7:9, 14b-17
John 10:27-30


A reflection on today's Sacred Scriptures:

                                    Fourth Sunday of Easter “C”             

Every year, the Fourth Sunday after Easter is called Good Shepherd Sunday. This year the emphasis is on the voice of Jesus. We can imagine how that voice must have stirred the hearts of all who were disposed to listen to it. How it must have moved people with its authority and its power to persuade!

The voice of Jesus was at times so loving, and at other times so challenging. It was that voice saying to Peter, "Feed my sheep" that still rang in his ears as he preached boldly to the Sanhedrin; it was that voice crying out, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" that echoed still in the heart of Paul as he and Barnabas preached in the synagogues of Perga and Antioch and Iconium. It was the voice of Jesus which drowned out the vicious lies of all those enemies of truth that tried to choke off the Good News so bravely proclaimed by Peter and Paul.

How gladly those great Apostles suffered persecution and even death "for the sake of the Name." No wonder we call Peter and Paul the great pillars of the early Church who inspired so many others not to fear contempt and bodily harm because the Holy Spirit was with them. Those who followed that voice would be rewarded with a glorious crown.

No wonder that literally millions of Christians have suffered for their faith down through the ages. Millions even today are deprived of human rights, imprisoned and killed just because they are loyal to that voice of the Good Shepherd. Racial hatred, abuse of women, child slavery, and exploitation of the poor, to name but a few, are the effects of strident, angry, and evil voices which constantly try to drown out the loving voice of the Good Shepherd who proclaims justice for the oppressed.

In Jesus' lifetime on earth as preacher and healer, He was known for His compassion and love. Shortly before His Passion and death, he stopped on his way to Jerusalem to weep over the city, crying out, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who were sent to it, How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood together under her wings, and you were not willing!"

Like a shepherd, Jesus leads His flock to eternal life. He called himself the door, the gate, the sheepfold itself. The shepherd knows each individual sheep by name, and each one of his flock are safe when they follow his call. "My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they never perish."

Today, we hear the voice of Jesus in the voice of His vicar, Pope Francis. Over and over, He is urging us to bring the power of our love and mercy to all without exception, especially to the poor, the persecuted, and the powerless. In faith, may we listen ever more obediently to our Shepherd.

4TH SUNDAY OF EASTER, CYCLE A

JOHN 10:1-10

Friends, today’s Gospel presents one of the most enduring and endearing images of Jesus. He is the Good Shepherd who guides and lays down his life for his sheep. How wonderful and strange that Christianity is not a set of ideas. It’s not a philosophy or an ideology. It’s a relationship with someone who has a voice. The first disciples were privileged to hear the voice of the historical Jesus. They heard its very particular tone and texture. But we hear his voice too in our own way, especially when we hear the Scriptures proclaimed at Mass. Mind you, we don’t just read the Bible; we hear the Bible. We also hear the voice of Jesus when the bishops and the Popes speak. We can also hear the voice of Jesus in the conscience, which Newman called “the aboriginal vicar of Christ in the soul.” We can hear the voice of Jesus in good spiritual friends as well, in those people who comfort us and challenge us and keep calling us to higher ideals and encourage us when we fall. We listen to the voice of Jesus because he is leading us to a renewed and transformed life with God.

RECLAIMING ADVENT

The Church urges people to reclaim Advent as a time of preparation and reflection. It is also a time that allows us to define what is human in a new way - in sharp contrast to the secularist vision of society, which the Holy Father Benedict XVI constantly warns us against.

A reflective stillness lies at the centre of Advent. Placed between Christ's first and second coming, the rhythms of the liturgy measure our time. Quietly, but insistently, it awakens our hope and invites us to wait upon the Lord who will fulfill his promise. It assures us that we will not wait in vain. Advent calls us to renew and deepen our trust, while the world finds trust difficult, and "hope" is dismissed as naive. Now, in this season of Advent we come to know that this time, the time in which we live, whatever the time, is the time of our redemption.
The liturgy of Advent is not like the seasonal background music in the shops, designed to put us in the right mood for spending. It is the song of faith, which expresses the reality from which we live our lives, and that faith gives us a particular way of seeing the world, of living in it and for it. Without pretension, we might describe it as a prophetic perspective. The Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel calls it the "exegesis of existence from a divine perspective". I think this is a good description of what we mean by discerning the "signs of the times". Christ is the centre of our existence; he is the one who establishes our perspective. For this reason, the Christian way of seeing things is necessarily distinctive. To those who do not share this perspective, it will appear strange. Hence the problem and the puzzle that Christianity poses for a secular culture. The puzzle is not caused by a Christ-centred perspective alone, however. Where a society – non Christian or post Christian - has forgotten how to read the substance of Christian faith, there can be a genuine ignorance but also a contrived ignorance among those who presume to know Christianity already. The old cliché about familiarity breeding contempt can be disconcertingly true. We live at a moment when our society is marked by deep struggles about its identity, values and purpose. The Church wants humanity to succeed, not fail. That is why it is passionately engaged in this struggle. It does not have any ambition to take away the legitimate independence of the secular but it does have a vision of what secular might be.
There are other voices, of course, sometimes representing an aggressive secularism or anti-theism, a vision of a secular society completely free of religion and its influence. Part of this approach is to construct a version of religion, especially Catholicism that not only makes it strange to the secular mind but presents it as a threat. Anti-theism represents religion as the enemy of the good that a secular society aspires to. Religion in general, but the Church in particular, comes to stand for all the deepest fears and demons of a liberal secularism: it is prejudiced, oppressive, irrational, authoritarian, capable of inspiring fanatical violence and abusive power. How often is the "religious" position characterised in this way? If religion is exorcised, the secularists say, then somehow society is restored to health. Liberated from the myths that hold us back, we can now make progress towards the secular light. If successful, this strategy of atheistic secularism not only gains a narrative dominance in defining society, it can feel its own vision legitimised and cleansed.
We Catholics do not deny that religion has its exotic, bizarre, grotesque and corrupt elements. But a straight glance at the state of our world or society gives enough evidence that these traits are not the monopoly of religion. An exclusively secular world, however democratic, is just as dark and broken as any other. The high priests of secular modernity can only look upon the reality of such a world with fear and horror. They know that ultimately their own doctrine of justification by faith alone in science, rationality, autonomy and limitless progress cannot produce salvation. Indeed, the evidence of the last century in particular is proof enough that science, technology and secular reason contain their own demons: self-centredness and destruction.

Before God goes out of our lives Advent calls us to consider not only that God is, but who God is. It does not present a puzzle but a mystery: God has finally disclosed his name, "Emanuel" - God with us. We expect a great theophany but all we have is an obscure stable. Even more radically, God chooses to be man, a frail human at that. Humanity and God are now inseparable and cannot be thought apart. We can no longer deny God without in some way denying ourselves. To exile him from the world is to alienate ourselves from our own truth. This is the Christian truth and it must inevitably challenge the secular dream of the sovereign self and its domination of creation. This is why it remains subversive of all our claims of omnipotence. All the arguments advanced by contemporary anti-theists in the secularist cause are dull and tired. That they are not new is not the point. If there is a battle to define a secular society, it hinges on the deeper battle to define what is human. This is the real issue.

  If there is nothing else beyond ourselves, we have, at last, become masters of our own destiny. Not only are we the principal character in our own story, we are the writer and the reader as well. Even a person who had no religious faith would be entitled to ask, "What's the catch?" If we are truly the architects of our own humanity, if there is no ultimate accountability for who we are or what we can become, we shall be left wondering what constitutes the perfect human being and the perfect human society? If it is true that we are self-made, then in whose image are we coined? We need only look to history, especially our recent history, to find eloquent witness to the impoverishment and waste resulting from such lunacy. In contrast, the Advent liturgy offers no false dreams. With a steady, clear-eyed realism it asks us to look at the world in which we live; the world in which the Word has chosen to become flesh. This is not a look that retreats into sentimental optimism or drags us into a weary fatalism. Advent reminds us that God has made the human condition his own condition. It takes us beyond the facile hopes of a somewhere, sometime better place or the gestures of stoic despair.
Left to ourselves, we remain only an endless enigma; but in Christ we see ourselves again. He, the image of the unseen God, also reveals our image, the truth of who we are and what we are to become. In him, we see what it means to be fully human, fully alive. This is why Christianity can never be in any doubt about the intrinsic value and dignity that belongs to every person. The transformative social, economic, and political significance of this truth are immediately clear. Human value and dignity are not dependent upon economic wealth, social status, intellectual ability or social utility. Laws and constitutions may enshrine rights, but the value and dignity of the human person cannot ultimately depend upon them. We know from experience that legal constructions and social conventions can be ignored, withdrawn or changed as powers and circumstances dictate.
A Christian faith that understands the meaning of Jesus Christ knows that the intrinsic dignity and value of the human person, from the beginning of life to its end, is secured within God's own Triune life. The Church's absolute opposition to any form of instrumentalisation of the human person is not only an ethical principle but a theological truth.

Grounded in the reality of Christ, Christianity offers a vision of an "integral humanism". It seeks to understand both the uniqueness and relational totality of every person. If we are serious about genuine human flourishing, the building of a real culture of life, then persons cannot be reduced to the material even when this is understood in the most complex way. We are spiritual beings who live in transcendence which is expressed in every aspect of our lives and relationships. Each one of us has a purpose, a reason for being; each of us is a unique and irreplaceable gift to the whole of humanity. If we are seduced into the impoverished vision of an "exclusive humanism", how can we create a culture that is genuinely life-giving? If we accept false images of our diminished selves and deny our unique vocation as human beings, then whose servant do we become?
A liberal secular society places great emphasis on personal autonomy. The potential increase or loss of autonomy is often the persuasive argument for or against a particular policy or position. In the birth, death and Resurrection of his Son, God not only presents us with the true image of what it is to be human, he offers us a new understanding of freedom. "Autonomy" can contain an unbalanced equation of freedom and power. When God presents us with his own freedom in the reality of his Incarnate Son, freedom and power are placed in relation to truth, which is love. Without this relation freedom is always in danger of becoming the brutal imposition of an unaccountable will. This is the old determinism that ordains the survival of the fittest and it corrupts all our relationships. Now, as Nietzsche accurately saw, Christianity and its ethic of the Kingdom destabilises this order of the strong, announcing its end. In Christ, God creates freedom, he does not destroy it. God, who comes to us with unexpected humility, is born, lives and dies in poverty, does not choose to overpower us but offers us an utterly new possibility. God does not confront us with a boundary; he presents us with an expanding horizon. He calls us into a deeper freedom and love by giving us the greatest freedom of all: the self-emptying of love beyond the bonds of family, nation and self-interest; beyond the accumulation of wealth or security for the sake of the good, especially the good of those who are the weakest and the most despised, those who have no freedom or power or anything to commend them except that they too are his image. Then, if necessary, to give joyously one's life for them. This is not weakness but a freedom that bestows on us the gift of glory. It is the transcendence which offers us life. In Advent we can begin to see what this may mean.
A secular world wants us to believe its version of our story. It wants us to look at the statistics for "religion" and see there a story of inevitable decline. If this is all we see and how we think, then we ourselves have begun to be secularised. We have been exiled to a strange wintry land where we cannot sing the Lord's song. At the heart of Advent is the figure of Mary. She is the one who attends to the Word and knows that whatever the circumstances, no matter how improbable things may seem, "nothing is impossible for God". Her Advent is both a waiting and an attentive readiness. Like any mother, it is a time of preparation for the child that grows within her. It is a time of learning, especially learning about herself. She knows that the life within her is already changing her and her body. So it is with the rhythms of faith and history. The life of the Spirit grows, often in hidden ways when all the signs are contrary. In these times we are not dying or declining, we are being made ready; we are learning anew who we are and what supreme mystery we carry. A secular world can describe us; it may seek to dismiss us, but it does not write our story, much less write us off. It cannot judge the life of the Spirit or the work that God is doing in the midst of his people.

DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY

Acts 5:12-16
Psalm 118:2-4, 13-15, 22-24
Revelation 1:9-11a, 12-13, 17-19
John 20:19-31 

DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY
The world was never the same after the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. 

As a consequence, the readings for the Sundays following Easter, all the way to Pentecost, deal with earth-shattering events. St. Luke wrote, not only his Gospel, but a second volume called the Acts of the Apostles that cover nearly seventy years of history. The first reading today, is taken from that book, It describes a scene in the Temple of spectacular healings. No, it's not Jesus who is the central figure, but the power of the Holy Spirit now present in Jesus' apostles. They are continuing God's mercy and compassion towards the sick and the crippled and the lame. Since Jesus had died on the cross, not just for some, but for all people, His followers show no discrimination in healing both rich and poor, Jews and strangers to Jerusalem!

Today's Second Reading is from the great "dream book" of John, the Book of Revelation. We learn that it is God Himself through the Angel who told John to write down these great scenes of future judgment and the glory that will come to Jesus and to those who are faithful to the Lamb. John writes from his exile along with many other Christians, exiled by the Emperor Domitian, to the Isle of Patmos. Today we think of countless Christians, driven from Moslem countries at a loss of possessions, employment, homeland and even their lives! Present-day persecution for The Faith, amounts to genocide. Governments that could help, are sadly so indifferent.

Why is this Sunday called Divine Mercy Sunday? It is so, because Pope John Paul II saw in the visions of a Polish Sister, Saint Faustina Kowalska, a message Jesus Christ wished the world to focus on more deeply: Christ's Divine Mercy! His Mercy is powerfully shown in today's Gospel as the newly-risen Savior appears to those who had betrayed Him, those who in weakness had run far away from the soldiers and from their Master in His three-hour agony and death.

As Jesus came through those locked doors where the Apostles were huddled in fear of arrest, He did not upbraid or condemn them, but said with loving compassion, "Peace be to You." He forgave them for their weakness their cowardice and their sinfulness. He continued to heal them of their doubts and fears. Secondly, he did not fire them from their ministry, but commissioned them to preach His Name to the ends of the earth. He restored His trust in them, and loved them even more. He would eventually send His Spirit to strengthen them with Power.

As Jesus showed His Divine mercy to His apostles on this Sunday, the Church urges us today to show our gratitude and belief in His never-failing forgiveness for our sins and betrayals of His love. He urges us to pray often for a world that has abandoned His commandments, ignored His words, and shunned His healing, Worst of all, they have failed to believe in His incredible mercy! We need to make reparation for the indifference of our world by our daily prayer and public witness!