“The Immortal Magdalene”

Hundreds of women have been lost in the folds of history and forgotten by the world (1). But she is still on every lip after two thousand years, and her portrait, from the brushes of the geniuses of art, still graces the halls of the Louvre museum in Paris.

She was one of the dancers in the palace of Herod, whose dancing girls were brought from Egypt, Greece, and Abyssinia... Every Jew forbade himself to set foot across the threshold of that palace; but she, the daughter of Magdala by Tiberias, defied her people and went off to dance there.

There were no demons in her... but there was in her an allure surpassing the allure of seven demons together.

She heard the Lord preaching and followed him to serve him — to serve a man who had no house, she who had grown used to the life of palaces.

She was a woman of strong nerves. Grief did not so break her that she went away with the others on that dreadful night. Everyone departed, even the owner of the garden, Joseph of Arimathea; and perhaps she was marking the place of the tomb in that spacious garden, so that she should not lose her way when she came with the dawn.

And she came, ahead of everyone, and saw the stone rolled away and the tomb empty, and she ran back a few steps to tell the disciples and the women behind her... And the poor little company lost its head... some ran to the tomb, and some turned back... But she — the bold, searching woman — went looking through the corners of the garden... peering into this hollow and that cavity... and in the darkness of dawn she saw a figure she took for the gardener, and asked him about her Lord. And when the man said: “Mary, do you not know me...?” her heart did not leap with terror, nor did she flee; rather she threw herself at his feet and bowed down, and then ran — in full command of her waking mind and her rejoicing heart — to bring the good news to the company... The Lord is risen... she saw him with these very eyes... What? The imaginings of shattered women...? Never — she saw him with her own eyes.

This is the Magdalene: extraordinary in the force of her wickedness... extraordinary in the force of her repentance, extraordinary in the force of her faith — a faith by which she earned the right to be the first to see the Lord after his resurrection.

A woman immortalized by her sin... and her repentance!

(1) From the book “Talks from the Heart.”