The House of New Bethany
...to whom will he have bequeathed Mary Magdalene?
Read the entire House of New Bethany series here.
Like the Mother of God and like St. John, Mary Magdalene will not finish her days by martyrdom. She will also live in the tranquil benediction of her love. She will live at the feet of the vanished Christ, as she lived in Bethany and in Calvary, a lover accustomed to the delights of contemplation, and having no other need but to look with her soul at the One whom she looked upon in other times through the transparent veil of mortal flesh. But what famous or obscure havens will have been prepared for her? Where will she hide the blessed remainder of her existence? Are they to be the deserts of the East, the river banks of the Jordan, Mt. Sion, the field after the harvest of Nazareth or of Bethlehem, which will be the last witnesses of her inaccessible charity? Jesus Christ bequeathed his Mother to Jerusalem, St. Peter to Rome, St. John to Asia --- to whom will he have bequeathed Mary Magdalene?
We know already, it is France who received from the hands of God this part of the Testament of His Son.[1]
The House of New Bethany
Welcome to The House of New Bethany.
For fifteen years, I walked in contemplation with the French heroines—Joan of Arc and Thérèse of Lisieux. From their radiant lives, I gathered reflections and wove them into a map of transcendent meaning, a cartography of meanings shimmering within the dawn light of my soul. In that faint, silvery horizon, a new realm began to reveal itself—a heavenly kingdom I came to call Mystical France, shining out of the heart of the Immaculate Virgin.
Through this vision, I consecrated my heart, mind, and soul to the Virgin Mary, entering her kingdom through the combined hearts of Joan and Thérèse. In their mystical union, the royal lineage of France rose like a sacred flame across the Sky-Veil, a celestial echo of divine courage and love.
Yet the radiance of this realm found its living form in Mary Magdalene. Her silent Being gleamed along the shores of Provence, where she became the bridge between France and the Cross. From the tomb of the Resurrection to the southern coasts of Gaul, Magdalene carried the fire of the new covenant—the apostle to France, the foundress of the House of New Bethany.
In her, the kingdom took on flesh and fragrance. Her contemplative stillness revealed a sacred order—a mystical syntax—through which all other devotions found their meaning. Magdalene’s path winds through the pure night of faith, guiding the soul to the light beyond the Veil. Her inceptual mode of being forms the quiet architecture of my own spiritual and philosophical life.
According to western tradition, Magdalene spent her final thirty years in solitude within a cave at La Sainte-Baume. There, the mysteries of the kingdom shone within her silence. Through this contemplative, mythopoetic journal, I seek to build a cave of contemplation in union with hers—a luminous solitude offered in the open, so that what I discover may also illumine another traveler of the Sky-Veil.