The Magdalene Mystique - The Path Inward

Last week I had the delightful opportunity of giving a talk about the name “Maria.” I thought perhaps you might want to mull over with me the question about that name, the mysterious longing that goes with it - the mystique - the love that has been generated by that name through the centuries - the search for an ideal when we say, for example, ” Hail Mary [Maria] full of grace.” Then the flip-side of that name, the scandal, the sensual, the name for the one thought unworthy and sinful.
So what’s in a name? Perhaps we should talk about this question found in Shakespeare within this context.

You know that there have been thousands of historical embodiments of the name Maria. These embodiments contrast and individuate – they blend and merge – they form a type. So what has this type said in the past and what does it say to us today?

Take the three monotheistic religious traditions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam: search for Maria and you will find.

There’s Miriam in Judaism – prophet and seer in her own right at the Exodus victory who “took a tambourine in hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing.” If you trace that Hebrew name Miriam into Egypt where the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek you will find the name is Marium – only one more step in the West when Greek is translated into Latin – the name becomes Mary – Maria in the West. Same silken thread of a golden name: Miriam, Marium, Maria or Mary.

Prophet and visionary who breaks out in song and dance – perhaps that’s what we want to embody when we name our child Maria, Miriam, Marium, or Mary.

Probably the most famous Maria is in Christianity, the mother of Jesus. The stories of Advent still ring in our ears: at times we can almost hear the rustling of Gabriel’s wings has he lights down at the young Maria’s doorstep to make his grand announcement to you a child is to be born. The Christmas carols and stories and the moving Magnificat.
Christmas it seems is even more popular in Christianity, and across the globe, than Easter.

Mother bearing a child – one who has been looked upon with favor? Is this what we are looking for with the name Maria?

We know that that name Maria, given to the mother of Jesus, weaves itself more deeply into the Church through the centuries, taking on greater and greater veneration and mystical weight and attraction through the centuries. And her golden name gets woven into the fabric of Islam and into the Qur’an. Interestinly, Maria the Virgin is mentioned, either directly or indirectly, 35 times in the Quan, much more so than in the Bible.

It seems that both motherhood and saintly purity and prophetic visionary are attributes that combine with her name in the Qur’an. She is counted originally pure and filled with grace. In her own infancy she is visited by angels and is given to visions. And at the birth of Jesus, when she is defamed, the infant Jesus speaks from his cradle in her defense.

Such incredible spiritual power given over to this embodiment of the name Maria. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, her name is interchanged with Theotokos, the mother of God.

From whence come these spiritual energies projected upon this lone maiden? The name that sweeps across the globe as mediator and friend.

Is this what we mean by the name Maria? Mediator full of grace and purity and friend?

What this is all about seems worthy of more conversation. The power of a name – perhaps it’s not the name but the person. Perhaps it’s in the one who is saying the name. Perhaps the power is in us and gets projected outward.

Could there be hiding somehow a flash of insight as to our very origins in the Great Mother, the womb of the earth, the voice of creation?

Of course it’s not just the Virgin who has famously incarnated this name. We will find not just one famed creature but many with this name. And just how many there are becomes a problem in church history.

Take the Marias at the empty tomb of Jesus. Maria of Clopas, Maria the mother of Joseph, who may or may not be the mother, also, of James. Then there was “the other Maria,” as though we know which one this is – now we have more than 3 though art history decided there were three Maries who went to the tomb. We can’t forget Mary Magdalene who was in all four gospels present at the cross and the tomb.

How many Marias were there? a frustrated Church Father asked.
And there begins in church history a problem with Maria.

One scholar threw up her hands and said there’s a muddle of Marias.

Why should this be so? Why so many Marias? It’s a very long tale but just to give you the highlights as to what happens to these various Marias in church history. One Maria gets superimposed on another so one is excluded and the other comes to the fore: The Magdalene and her apostolic witness gets replaced by the Virgin – the spiritual mysticism of the Magdalene has to go down under. This happened in the eastern branch of Christianity.

And in the West, the name Maria becomes a name that gets attached to many of the unnamed women in the Bible, so the unnamed woman taken in adultery, the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, the anointing woman from the city, are named Maria, by their identification with Maria of Magdala.

Somehow, when it is said and done in history, we come up with the unlikely conclusion about the name Maria, one a virgin and the other, how shall we say it, a prostitute, well, a sinful woman, though a repentant one, the woman in art history that becomes the sensual soul of Christianity – the most popular saint in the Medieval Period – the ravishing Maria of Magdalene, artists’ dream, the sinner dressed in scarlet with flowing strawberry blond hair, or praying in a hermit’s cave in the desert wilderness repenting of her sins. Two ends of the spectrum, one positive and the other negative, signifying woman.

Do you find a problem with this manipulation of a name? What’s going on here? Can we figure this out? Is it a problem with the name or the person? Or is the person not the problem at all. Perhaps the problem is in us. Mary the Mother of Jesus