St. Mary Magdalene
St. Mary Magdalene
“Jesus saith to her: Mary. She turning, saith to him Rabboni (which is to say, Master).” John 20:16. (Douay-Rheims)
St. Mary Magdalene’s journey from the foot of the Cross to the shores of Provence is the mythos1 of the renaissance of Catholic and Royal France in our hearts. Magdalene is the foundress of a heavenly royal line, the House of New Bethany.2 She is our model and archetype of the contemplative spirituality emerging from our journey with St. Joan and St. Thérèse. We are with Christ at the foot of the Cross; we journey to the shores of mystical France in the grace of intellectual enlightenment through Magdalene’s intercession; we contemplate the mysteries of our Catholic faith in relation to the heavenly form of France; we bring forth that which is hidden in us as the French Catholic diaspora, and which is to be made manifest (Mark 4:22) for the salvation of souls and France. Magdalene’s mode of being constitutes the intellectual syntax of our constituted being as heirs of her royal line. Her map of meaning is a shared mode of being presented as a soft light through the darkness of faith lining the way by which St. Joan and St. Thérèse guide us to our heavenly kingdom.
Through her mystical marriage with Christ in Heaven, St. Mary Magdalene in Provence founded the Catholic spirit of what would become France, the preeminent daughter of the Church on earth. The Holy Spirit founded France, as the reflection of a heavenly form, through St. Mary Magdalene on the shores of Provence. She brought the apostolic spirit from the foot of the cross and the tomb of the resurrected Christ to France. This was the Providential design bequeathed to France through St. Mary Magdalene and which later would be defended by St. Joan of Arc and spiritually renewed by St. Thérèse. As the French Catholic diaspora of Magdalene’s House of New Bethany, we must defend mystical France in our hearts and bring Christ and Our Lady to the world through our calling.
“Mythos” is intended according to Merriam-Webster, “a pattern of beliefs expressing often symbolically the characteristic or prevalent attitudes in a group or culture.” Magdalene’s mystical mode of being in Provence, which I accept as tradition and historical reality, is the spirit, the “mythos,” that imbues our devotion. Through an empathic devotion, we share her mystical mode of being in our own individuality for the fulfillment of God’s will.
“Bethany is no more, but Jesus Christ has given to Magdalene the house she lost, and the one and the other, the Master and the Disciple, the God who was loved and the woman who loved, live together at St. Maximin, as in other times they lived on the sides of the Mount of Olives. Marseilles is the Jerusalem of this new Bethany, and France is the greater and more faithful Judea. I say France; because it was she that inherited Provence, and with her St. Magdalene.” Lacordaire, OP, Henri-Dominique. The Life of St. Mary Magdalene. Dominican Friars, Province of St. Joseph, 2015. p. 90.