The feast of St Mary Magdalene

St Mary Magdalene as Wonderful Mystical Type Part I | Difficult Old Testament Passages

She, being effectively the most beautiful creature that ever followed the Christ—sparing only the Immaculate Virgin herself, the New Eve, the Mother of God—abandoned herself into the bosom of that same New Eve with agonizing tears as she was forced to bear the sight of the Man Who had changed her life forever being horribly scourged, whipped, and beaten almost unto death.

And then, at the apex of this great suffering and passion of Our Lord, she, the New Eve, and St John the apostle, the beloved disciple, were the only ones who remained under the cross, faithful to Him unto the end—only these three that loved him in a special way.

This wondrous and unfathomable event was the great transition from the Old Dispensation to the New. For, as the Anointed One drew His last breath and bowed His divine head, passing from this life unto the Netherworld from the four great wounds to his hands and feet, it was then that the curtain was torn asunder in the Temple, then that the wicked and arrogant Pharisees witnessed all that they had treasured so dearly go up in a fury conflagration, manifesting to their hard hearts that the Old Law was in and of itself nothing, but was only meant to point to the deeper reality of the spiritual mysteries—that no mere animal, no matter how unblemished—could truly atone for our sins, but only the Divine Lamb of God. And how? It is this way because our sins are choosing created things in place of God, implying that the created goods are superior to God, Who is an infinite being of love and mystery. And what is this except an infinite insult to our Creator, whose goodness and treasure is infinitely above anything that is merely made.

But then if we infinitely insult our Creator by our serious sin, our debt is infinite. But how do we pay an infinite debt, seeing as we are merely finite in essence? Well, of course, the reality is that we cannot in any conceivable sense. Only our Maker could atone for us since only our Maker is infinite. This therefore brings us to the Incarnation: the necessity if the Second Person of the Holy Trinity becoming a human person and suffering with and for us.

What then could we say except that since this holy woman of which we speak and St John the apostle are the only creatures other than the Virgin present at the cross, the holy remnant that are faithful, that they in fact are types of the remnant Old people of God who in the beginning will accept the Gospel at first.

Indeed, this incredible event at the tree of murder, upon which the Eternal Son of God put to death sin and iniquity in human history and ushered in, again, the New Age, how much more can the presence of the two creatures that have but a small amount of sin symbolize the faithfulness of the remnant Jewish people who will believe in the first coming of Christ, even as these two holy ones themselves are the remnant of the disciples that do not abandon Jesus at the time of his suffering, which was not anticipated for the Messiah, even as the same Messiah did not meet the expectations of the prefiguring people, the people who were looking for a physical savior instead of a spiritual savior.

Indeed, also, St John the apostle seems to be a veritable type of the prophet Daniel, in as much as St John is the author of the New Testament apocalypse, just as Daniel was effectively the author of the Old Testament apocalypse. This proves all the more telling since the same great Angel Gabriel that announced to the New Eve the Incarnation itself—which would culminate with this woman of women standing at the foot of the cross to complete the redemptive process that had begun in her womb—would be the same spiritual being who prophesied to Daniel in chapter 9 the precise year that the Holy One would appear publicly in the 70 weeks of years. And if that were not enough, the same prophecy foretells down to the exact time when the Anointed One himself would be cut off in the midst of His life and that the sacrifice and oblation would cease, which precisely occurred at the cross, where, at the last instant of life, a great earthquake shook the ground, tearing as we saw the curtain asunder in the temple, ending the old sacrifice forever.

Finally, this holy woman is the first creature of God to witness the Christ at His resurrection. However, we know that she does not recognize him at first but that, rather, He must speak to her three times before her eyes are opened. How might this symbolize a mystery? Well, at this point it is common sense based upon what we have seen so far. How? Well, we can say this: if this holy lady is already imaging a great crossing from Old to New and in a certain sense the anticipation of the old people coming to Faith at first, then the resurrection, which completes the redemptive process of Christ in his public ministry, could envision the point at which the total fulfillment of old into new is realized at the end of time, namely, that just as the lady’s eyes are finally opened in the third time that the Christ speaks unto her, this can image that in the final third age of the church, at the end of the world, all shall be made all in all; the people that had once not seen or believed shall believe, shall recognize their savior Who stood before them all these ages yet they could not see that it was truly Him. In this way, it fulfills the mystery that those who are the last to receive any Revelation from God are the first to receive it in full, so the first to receive any Revelation from God are the last to receive it in full.

Of course, we know that this beloved lady is none other than our dear St Mary Magdalene. Toward this end, and in light of all these reflections, I believe with all my heart that St Mary Magdalene images three great central mysteries of our faith and is a type of these mysteries, which makes her one of the most special and beloved persons of Jesus.

Firstly, in the scene in which Jesus forgives her of her adultery and does not have her stoned, I believe that it shews forth that she forms a central character in the transition of the Old to New law.

Secondly, she comes into play as the woman that anoints Jesus in one scene and then in another wipes his feet. Here, I see in symbolism the extremes of Christianity from those who criticize her, namely, the liberal and conservative heretics, or Pharisaical and Sadducaical heretics, which is to say what ultimately becomes communism and fascism.

Thirdly, she symbolizes the transition from old to new at the cross as we have seen from above.

Finally, at the tomb, when she is unable to recognize Jesus until the third time that Jesus speaks to her, I humbly conjecture a symbolism that only after the third great age of church history do the Jews recognize Jesus as their Messiah.

Having said these things, let us proceed into the first section, where we will look at difficult Old Testament passages.

St Mary Magdalene: Transition from Old to New

Negative Old Testament Laws

Firstly, and unfortunately, God had to instantiate many negative Old Testament laws that were physically not His ultimate desire but that were necessary to meet a child humanity where they were at. More specifically, just as a child must first learn through illustration before graduating to abstract written words without images, so God needed to give His first People physical pictures that were mere images of what would really matter later: spiritual realities. In other words, the mere physical laws, when they pointed to negative spiritual realities, were themselves also negative and, in fact, things that God would not ultimately want in His eventual Plan in fullness.

Some examples of these were the death penalty for serious sin, the taking of the Holy Land by bloody and universal slaughter, down even to the infants, and the ostracizing of the lepers from the regular community. Each of these points to a negative spiritual reality, as follows:

The Death Penalty

The ultimate end of serious sin is eternal death in hell. But the early People are not ready for this, so God must give them a picture as the next worse thing, which is clearly physical death: hence, the death penalty is instituted for various, severe sins.

The Bloody Take-over of the Holy Land

The taking of the Holy Land by blood-curdling force is not what liberals say it is: a mere human fashioning that the Jewish people thought God wanted. That is based upon Enlightenment heresy, which sees religion as man trying to find God instead of as God coming down to meet man. Rather, this difficult passage most likely means that when the Church, the New People, are about to conquer a land for Christ, spiritually, once it is converted, every last jot and title of its cultural and religious errors which cannot be transformed into something reconcilable to the Gospel must be spiritually slaughtered, massacred by the New Adam and Eve, by the flaming sword of the supreme Archangel, that the blood of these diabolical errors might flow down into eternal fire, consumed by God’s wrath and destroyed, In other words, that the People there cannot be corrupted by them. For, does not the Church massacre even the smallest of heresies since her inception, knowing that the tiniest cancer may in the end destroy the whole person.

The greatest example of this in the history of the Church is when Our Lady of Guadalupe annihilated the diabolical religion of volcano worship and human sacrifice of the Aztecs to convert them into Catholicism.

The Unclean Community

As for the ostracizing of the physically unclean from the clean community, this was obviously psychologically cruel to the suffering ones and does not express the true compassion that Christ would show the lepers in his public ministry in the New Dispensation. However, at the time it was unfortunately objectively necessary in the first instance for the separation to avoid the entire flock of the Israelites to die off from the infection. But even more to the point there is this purpose clearly: in order that the clean community may not be infected by the unclean in the literal physical sense, how much more should those heretics or sinners who are publicly and spiritually unclean in the New covenant be cast out from the true and clean community, lest they infect the faithful sheep with errors and sin, that is, excommunication from the Church.

St Mary Magdalene at the Stoning: Transition from Old to New

Consequently, St. Mary Magdalene at her stoning is revealing the transition to the New Law: Jesus is unveiling, as we all know, that even though the death penalty shows, in a beginning sense. the ultimate consequences of serous sin [from physical death to eternal death in hell], nevertheless God’s ultimate desire is for Him to show the sinner loving mercy, to help the person be healed of the wrongdoing and move on to live in the love of God, so that, hopefully, in natural death, they pass into eternal life. This is clearly one of the greatest lessons of Old to New Law in the Gospel.

Also, as one more point, we recall once again that St Mary Magdalene is the only female creature present at the cross, sparing the Ever Virgin herself, who is mainly distinguished from Magdalene only by her ultimate purity, her sinlessness. This, again, was where the Old Dispensation crossed into the New, which places Magdalene at an epic juncture to Christ.

In the next segment, we shall consider how St Mary Magdalene’s inability to recognize the risen Christ at first at the tomb can be a wonderful type of the progressive conversion of the Jewish people to the Gospel, shewing forth that only at the final time of Church history are their eyes opened to the Messiah who has stood before them for the whole of these ages of the New covenant, even as St Mary Magdalen’s eyes are not fully opened until the Christ utters unto her “Mary!”, and she exclaims “Rabonni!” which means, “Teacher!”