"I SOUGHT HIM WHOM MY HEART LOVES"

The Feast of St. Mary Magdalene was celebrated recently, and given the recent and growing amount of books, articles and internet sites that are seeking to reveal the mystery of the Magdalen, I'm excited to dive in and prayerfully reflect on what makes her beauty shine; she was such a faithful disciple and the first recorded to have seen the Risen Lord. I'll be going to the Scriptures for my thoughts, however, not a pseudo-history written 1980 years after her death, or a "historical" thriller novel that was historically a mess. (Oiy!) The Church has selected for this feast a powerful reading from the Song of Songs. The Bride is seeking her Beloved, and the ache in her heart in the searching is deeply stirring. We see her move through the city streets with a yearning for communion that echoes in our own hearts. For me this brings to mind an insight from G. K. Chesterton. "Our religion should be less of a theory and more of a love affair." After all, this Songs of Songs is passionate and this love poetry is SCRIPTURE! God's inspired word! (I love it, love it, love it!). But how seldom do we see life this way? Do we see God as the Husband of our hearts, or as a cold Overseer, or a Grandpa who is always "nice"? Mary Magdalene saw life as a romance. She was passionate in her following of Christ, and passion led her to the Cross, and that same passion led her through early morning darkness to a desperate place, a darkened tomb. Let's sit in silence with this one. Are we not called to such passion, such intimacy? Novels like the DaVinci Code portray Mary Magdalene as a literal wife of Jesus. It’s a sad distraction from the Real Truth. Jesus came to seek a Bride, but that Bride is all of us, a lost Bride who has wandered the streets of sin and refused the gift of the Bridegroom for too long. Our hearts ache for his infinite and intimate love. All our loves here below are pale glimmers of this deeper intimacy, this selfless and self-giving love of God for us. What a wonder! And our passion and devotion for each other is meant to point us upwards to the True Love of Heaven! God is Love, and this love is beyond all telling! But still we must tell it! And to a world that seeks love in all the wrong places. We must know Him and listen to Him calling our names as He called out to Mary at the tomb. Then touched by such love, we too can run to the others and share the good news!