{"id":19092,"date":"2020-07-20T09:11:40","date_gmt":"2020-07-20T13:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19092"},"modified":"2020-07-20T09:11:40","modified_gmt":"2020-07-20T13:11:40","slug":"go-back-to-the-gospels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19092","title":{"rendered":"Go Back to the Gospels"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Go\nBack to the Gospels<\/strong><br>\nMonday, \u202fJuly 20, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hPya3CbwVgk\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>Today,\nCynthia Bourgeault, a member of the CAC\u2019s teaching faculty, shares an epiphany\nshe had about the significance of Mary Magdalene\u2019s presence at the death,\nburial, and resurrection of Jesus.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\nwas spending Holy Week 2005 on a \u201cworking retreat\u201d with the Fraternit\u00e9s\nmonastiques de J\u00e9rusalem, the innovative young monastic order in residence at\nthe basilica in V\u00e9zelay [France]. This mixed community of men and women monks\nis well known for the imagination and beauty of its liturgy, and toward the end\nof the Good Friday liturgy I witnessed an unusual ceremony that changed forever\nhow I understood my Christianity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nliturgy was long and intricate, performed with meticulous reverence by the\nbrothers and sisters. . . . As sunset fell, one of the monks began to read in\nFrench the burial narrative from the Gospel of Matthew. . . . I allowed the\nsonorous French to float by my ears while I drifted in and out, catching what I\ncould. . . . Out of the haze of words came \u201c<em>et Mary Magdalene et l\u2019autre Marie restaient debout en\nface du tombeau<\/em>&nbsp;. . .\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s\nwhen I did my double take. <em>Mary Magdalene<\/em>&nbsp;was there? <em>That<\/em>&nbsp;was in the scripture?\nWhy hadn\u2019t I ever noticed it before?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thinking\nthat maybe my French had failed me, I went back to my room that evening, took\nout my Bible, and looked it up. But yes, right there in Matthew 27:61 it read:\n\u201cAnd Mary Magdalene and the other Mary remained standing there in front of the\ntomb.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Suddenly\nthe whole picture changed for me. I\u2019d thought I knew the tradition well. As an\nEpiscopal priest I\u2019d presided over many Good Friday liturgies, and as a choral\nmusician, I\u2019d sung my share of Bach Passions. I\u2019d thought I knew the plot\nbackward and forward. How could this key point have escaped my attention? No\nwonder Mary Magdalene came so unerringly to the tomb on Easter morning; she\u2019d\nstood by in silent, unflinching vigil the whole time Jesus was being laid to\nrest there. Maybe she never left . . . Since that moment I have literally not\nheard the Passion story in the same way. It inspired me to go back to the\ngospels and actually <em>read<\/em>&nbsp;the story in a new way. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like myself, a\ngreat many Christians have absorbed most of what they know about Mary Magdalene\nthrough the dual filters of tradition and the liturgy, which inevitably direct\nour attention toward certain aspects of the story at the expense of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mary Magdalene<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Love\nand Knowing Become One<\/strong><br>\nSunday, \u202fJuly 19, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This week I\u2019m excited to share another wonderful model of\naction and contemplation, Mary Magdalene. One of Jesus\u2019 closest disciples, the\nCatholic Church celebrates her feast day on July 22. &nbsp;My friend Cynthia\nBourgeault tells a story about the moment when she told an older priest friend\nthat she was writing a book about Mary Magdalene. She recounts, \u201cHe looked at\nme long and hard, as only an old friend can, and then said, \u2018Go gently. Try not\nto leave me behind.\u2019\u201d [1] I, too, will try to \u201cgo gently\u201d in these meditations\non Mary Magdalene, yet at the same time, I want to challenge our preconditioned\nand possibly mistaken ideas about who this woman was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For\nover a millennium, Mary of Magdala was misidentified as the woman with the\nalabaster jar who was called a \u201csinner\u201d and who washed Jesus\u2019 feet with her\ntears and dried them with her hair (Luke 7:36\u201350). While we may never know for\ncertain if those two women were the same or separate individuals, the\nconflation has confused Christianity\u2019s view of them. Either way, Jesus shows\nboth Gospel women nothing but respect, forgiveness, and love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What\nwe do know about Mary Magdalene is that she was the woman who was closest to\nJesus. She was \u201cpossessed by seven demons\u201d and Jesus healed her (Luke 8:2). She\nis mentioned in the Resurrection accounts by name in all four Gospels,\nsometimes alone, sometimes in the company of other women. [2] She was the first\nto meet the risen Christ. The fact that she immediately went to embrace him is\na testament to the closeness of their relationship, the mutual regard and\naffection they must have shared. When Jesus said to her \u201cDon\u2019t cling to me\u201d\n(John 20:17), he was indicating that the time for physical closeness was in the\npast. Mary\u2019s love had to release the finite in order to reach a more expansive,\nspiritual dimension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mary\nMagdalene is the person in the Gospel who most needs love to be stronger than\ndeath and so she is the first to know it\u2014and perhaps at the deepest level. She\nis the first one who symbolically comes to \u201cconsciousness,\u201d as it were, of\nJesus as the risen Christ and thus is the clear \u201cwitness to the witnesses.\u201d She\nis the real knower; in fact, love and knowing have become one in her. Mary is\nthe archetypal name for all those who have been led by love into awareness of\ntheir True Selves and know its Source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mary Magdalene\nis the icon and archetype of love itself\u2014needed, given, received, and passed\non. She is a stand-in for all of us who seek an intimate and loving\nrelationship with the divine. Jesus\u2019 appearance to her first and alone is the\nclear affirmation of the wonderful and astounding message that we do not need\nto be perfect to be the beloved of Jesus and God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Go Back to the Gospels Monday, \u202fJuly 20, 2020 Today, Cynthia Bourgeault, a member of the CAC\u2019s teaching faculty, shares an epiphany she had about the significance of Mary Magdalene\u2019s presence at the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. I was spending Holy Week 2005 on a \u201cworking retreat\u201d with the Fraternit\u00e9s monastiques de J\u00e9rusalem, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19092"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19092"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19093,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19092\/revisions\/19093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}