Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene

Today is Resurrection Sunday, Easter Sunday. Our St. Ignatius reflections today focused on John 20 and the resurrection event.
My personal focus today was on all of this in relationship to Mary Magdalene. What I write is mainly out of my imagination. I think when one dies it would be good to have at least one person who really loves you, more would be better. I imagine Mary Magdalene loved Jesus the most, perhaps even more than Jesus’ mother, Mary, or even more than the Apostle John. It was a different kind of love for each of these people.

 
Mary Magdalene is said to be a sinner, but we are all sinners and need to know how big of sinners we are, just like Mary Magdalene. Some say she was a prostitute, but there is no evidence of that being true that I know of. There are other ways to sin. Mary was rich. She gave lots of money to support Jesus. She loved Jesus. Jesus was broke. All He had worked for all his life physically was gone. He had some good years too, and had money at times in his life when some wealthy people around Capernaum would hire Him. One time Mary hired to make a chest of drawers for her clothing. She had some nice clothes. Some people said she should have worn more of them sometimes, but she wanted to look good to the men and be compelling to them. She was about 30 years old, a beautiful woman with long red hair. Oh, the chest Jesus built had dovetail drawer joints, hand cut ones too. The drawers opened smoothly on wood runners one would put a little wax on occasionally to make them slide easily. The air would whoosh out just right as one closed the drawers. Jesus always remembered making that chest for Mary. She paid him well and gave him a hug when delivered it to her home. Jesus loved Mary.

 
After Jesus died, Mary cried all night. It was the Sabbath and she knew she should be sleeping and resting, but she just couldn’t do it. All she had ever believed in Jesus and other “religious” stuff and how He said one should overcome the evil and sin she had done, and overcoming evil with good, which to her was the Goodness and presence of Jesus in her life had been taken away.

 
Mary did not know what to do. Mary was a “true believer”. It was cool that Sunday morning and Mary got up very early, having tossed and turned all night, and slid out one of the drawers in the chest Jesus built for her as she gently wept in the subdued light of the blood moon that year. There aren’t many years the moon looks like that, but the Jewish sages had talked about blood moons before and Mary wondered if maybe God had caused something to make the moon look that way, just because Jesus had died. She put on more clothes than normal, heavier ones, but not her best because she would be out in a garden area close to where the tomb was. Most everybody knows the story about Mary and how she went to the tomb and the angels were there and the tomb was empty. Jesus was not there. I read it again and I cried as Mary realized it was Jesus, really, alive again and she loved him so much and hugged him again, a long time, just like when Jesus built the chest of drawers. Jesus had to tell her to let loose, it was getting too emotional for both of them. But all of us who know Jesus want to cling to him too…

 
Most everybody knows about these things; her story has been told and retold for thousands of years. I am just filling in some details of how it could have been, how I imagine it and how Mary ran with long hair flowing, and danced as she skipped along the Judean hills to go to tell Peter. Mary was the very first Evangelist, telling this good and wonderful news. A woman was not supposed to be a witness back then, but she did it anyway because Jesus, whom she loved, told her to do it. “Go and tell” Jesus said.

 
Let us go and tell it too…

John Cooper