She Was There

Of all people whom Jesus freed from demon possession, one woman stands out. She’d accumulated seven demons. Today we might disbelieve a devil had anything to do with her problems; they were rather a host of physical or psychological illnesses. Serious, indeed, but possession?

Ask several of my friends who have dabbled with the occult if there is a not-so-holy spirit world and they’d tell you. The dark powers have a mesmerizing way of taking hold. However, the reason the Son of God came to earth was “that He might destroy the works of the devil.” To Satan, those are fighting words. But he lost the battle over Mary Magdalene.

Any demon, let alone seven, would have caused Mary immense torment. The Church Fathers said that the possessed are most pitiable of all suffering people, because their ability to will is nearly stripped away. They are marionettes under another will that never wishes them well. In contrast, when Jesus cast out her malevolent puppeteers, Mary Magdalene experienced not only that he was a man of unequaled power, but unequaled love. He gave her freedom to be and to choose.

Her choice? Great fidelity and love for her deliverer. She stood at the forefront of devoted women disciples who were often with Jesus and the twelve male disciples when he went through towns to preach his Good News.

Ah, yes, there was strong love between Mary Magdalene and Jesus. So the old tales resurrected by Dan Brown and others claimed she married him and had his children whose descendents became royalty in France. The postmodern world ridicules the idea that there can or even should be intense love between adults without it being sexual. Yet Christ was passionate for all people at a level most of us don’t understand. He prayed for us “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us.”

Mary was there when the Pharisees put pressure on Jesus, likely there when Pilate turned him over for execution. The Gospels reported she witnessed his crucifixion, but she must have first seen him drag his cross up the Jerusalem road Latin Christians later named Via Delarosa, “Road of Suffering.”  She saw him fall from pain, blood loss, exhaustion, the weight of the wooden beam. She felt a small gladness when soldiers forced Simon to help carry that beam. She supported Jesus’ mother on that Via until they reached the Place of the Skull, where executions took place.

From a distance Mary Magdalene watched the soldiers nail and bind Jesus to the cross, winch it up, and drop it into the hole. She moved close when it was feasible, saw Jesus struggle for every breath, and heard every word he gasped. She stayed through the darkness at noon and felt the earth quake. She joined the deep mourning of creation over the death of its Maker as he gave up his spirit.

While the twelve disciples of the Savior, with the exception of John, had betrayed, denied, or abandoned Him, Jesus’ mother, Mary Magdalene and other women remained by his side. How could they bear to witness all this horror and injustice and not totally collapse with grief & rage?

For Mary Magdalene, somehow the strength of demons had been transformed into the strength of faith. She was faithful to him not only in days of fame, but in extreme humiliation and insult to the bitter end—and beyond.

Mary stayed at the cross while Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus took the body down, and accompanied them to the cemetery so she knew where to return to finish anointing the body. She watched as they covered over the cave with a large stone. Only then did she reluctantly leave because of Passover and Sabbath curfew laws.

Barely after the Sabbath was over Mary hurried to the tomb. She was the first person there. Is it any surprise then that she was the first person to see her dear Rabbi, alive, and speaking her name in that tone she knew so well? She was the first to go back to where the Disciples were hiding out and to tell them, “The Lord is Risen.”

St. Mary Magdalene, Apostle to the Apostles, the first in the world to preach the Resurrection.

The Disciples judged Mary’s report as hysterical woman talk, and Jesus had to appear to them several times before they comprehended. Obviously their slowness did not mean they lost out. Yet somehow they missed out on the unadulterated delight of the one disciple who never left.

I am far away from that time. I am one of billions who have not seen nor heard Christ, whose hands have never touched him. But I can be one of those whom Jesus praises, “Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe.” After all, I know something of the love of the risen Lord repairing broken areas in my life. I can emulate Mary Magdalene, my Apostle in faithfulness and devotion. Perhaps I might catch a spark of her relief and joy in that Easter Sunday garden — he’s not dead, he is risen!

Go out with Joy

Lethargy mocks your attempts to work. Loathing nit-picks like a research tech. Anxiety bites off its muzzle. Depression bangs its tin cup on your cell bars.

Gaze out against the skyline. Can you see it? The edges of winter-bleached trees have taken on a haze of green.

Now look near you. One of those giant skeletons is beckoning. Go ahead, grasp a low-hanging branch, and the distant lime smudge will come into focus. New individual buds break out from their bony props in search of energy.

Clasp a twig of buds in your palm. How like a infant’s fingers they are, small and vulnerable still to cold and frost. Yet every digit extends fully to the elements in reach for the sun. Not long now the fingers will unroll their banners and wave you into Spring.

For as the rain comes down,

and the snow from heaven,

and do not return there,

but water the earth,

and make it bring forth and bud,

that it may give seed to the sower

and bread to the eater,

So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth;

It shall not return to Me void,

but it shall accomplish what I please,

and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

For you shall go out with joy,

and be led out with peace;

the mountains and the hills

shall break forth into singing before you,

and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

(Isa. 55:10-12)

Come, Thou Long-expected Jesus

On my mantle I have arranged the couple dozen figurines of my Fontanini nativity set, each character frozen in a perpetual gaze. The young pan piper seems lost in his melody, and another youth leans against a fence, musing toward my hearth. The shepherds and most of the sheep lift their faces to my ceiling. The goose girl and the old garlic farmer, too, pause to watch. An ox and donkey rest in the stable, ready to chew their cud, while a token angel hovers in the background. Joseph and Mary kneel near them, hands raised in anticipated adoration. The two look down at an empty manger, because high church tradition and common sense ask me to leave it so until the Day comes to celebrate Jesus’ actual birth. Each creature in my crèche holds its breath in a resin-bound chest. Waiting for God.

I, too, wait. But what kind of God do I expect?

I wait for an accessible God, a Holy Infant, who in his vulnerable innocency softens our fearful and resistant hearts and makes a manger his crib. How gentle is a God who thinks it best to slip unobtrusively into the human race amid only a couple dozen witnesses. Such action St. Isaac of Syria calls “exalted humility.”

The Word who became human clothed himself with humility, and thus spoke with us in our human body…Creation could not behold him unless he took part of it to himself and thus conversed with it: only thus was creation able to hear the words of his mouth face to face.*

I wait for a restoring God, a Saving Victim, because life’s experiences deny us the naiveté of “children nestled all snug in their beds.” When the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Child matures, his creatures behold him but cannot bear to hear his words. His humility descends even lower, for far from respecting him at least as a decent human being, his own ravage the very body designed to embrace them. How merciful is a God who thinks that his bloodied hands give best the healing touch a broken creation needs. He willingly makes a manger his coffin.

I wait for an intervening God, a Warrior King, as thousands of African women protest unrestrained mass rapes in Congo, and Port-au-Prince residents hope in vain for homes. I plead for his sovereign power to rescue the oppressed and destroy evil once and for all. How just is a God who thinks that truth and righteousness must prevail. Yet, as in the Bethlehem grotto, he seems to have hidden himself.

I finally catch a glimpse of the Warrior King in the hazy cosmic distance of the last book of Holy Scripture. St. John’s apocalyptic vision reveals he is not at all what I would expect: a Lamb looking as though it had been slain. But this humble, sacrificial Lamb standing in the midst of the throne of heaven is more like a royal lion. He takes command of all judgment of the world and ushers in an everlasting kingdom of peace. Infinitely outnumbering my token figurine, angels encircle the throne and sing; this time every creature in heaven, on earth and sea, joins in**:

 Worthy is the Lamb,

who was slain,

to receive power

and wealth

and wisdom

and strength

and honor

and glory

and praise!

Returning to my Fontanini crèche, I defy tradition and common sense to place my tiny lamb figurine in the empty manger. Someday, God will make it his throne.

Come again, long-expected Jesus.

 

*Daily Readings with St. Isaac of Syria, p. 66

**Revelation 5:6-13

So is Woman an Add-On?

In my recent blog post, “Can You Really Know Yourself?” the two authors I quoted threw the word “man” and “mankind” around with the carefree abandon of conventional 4th and 18th century linguistic use. Probably the women of St. Basil’s and Alexander Pope’s day knew these words often included both genders. Going further back, Jewish and Christian women of ancient times most likely understood that the Scripture text, “Let us make man in our image” included woman, too.” Right? Well, maybe they did, and maybe they didn’t.

Today, gender inclusive language is one attempt to clarify for both sexes that females have equal presence and participation in any reference to humans as a whole. This is an example of how as a society changes in its self-concept, its language also changes. But let’s face it, inclusive language is still in the awkward stage. For example, “When the student cites an entry from an encyclopedia in [his/her; his or her] essay, [he/she; s/he; he or she] should follow the Chicago Manual of Style.” Makes for a beautifully flowing sentence, doesn’t it?

So until our language accurately and succinctly expresses gender inclusion, certain accommodations are called for. Both men and women have historically required reference points that help them come to know themselves. In the Bible’s case particularly, all of the human race needs to be able to see itself appropriately reflected in its narratives and poems on occasion. Thus, it has not only been since the 1970s and 80s that people have worked at gender inclusive communication. In its ancient languages, the scripture of Genesis 1:26-27 used the word “man” (Heb.: 'ādām; Grk.: anthrōpos) to identify the category of creature, then succinctly clarified the word’s scope of meaning.

Likewise, St. Basil was concerned that his 4th century listeners clearly understand who the “man” is in Gen. 1:27:

“Man!” says the woman, “And what about me? It is the male who was created, for,” she says, “He did not say ‘her’ who is man, but by the term ‘man’ He is shown to mean the masculine.” But no! in order that nobody . . . should take the expression “man” . . . to refer only to the male, the Scripture has added: “male and female He made them.”[1]

We women, then, are not simply add-ons to God’s initial creation of the imago dei. As Basil went on to emphasize, “The woman also possesses, like the male, what has been created in the image of God.”[2]

[1] Johanna Manley, ed., trans., Wisdom. Let Us Attend (Menlo Park, Calif.: Monastery Books, 1997), 712. 
[2] Ibid.