We recently celebrated the feast day of St Mary Magdalene, to whom a beautiful chapel is dedicated in our church. From the Gospels we know that this highly honoured woman was among the inner circle of Our Lord’s close disciples who accompanied Him and ministered to Him, that He had exorcised her of seven demons, that she was present at His Crucifixion and burial, and that she is the first recorded witness of His Resurrection.
From the early centuries until recently, Western Catholic tradition generally considered Mary Magdalene to be the same person as Mary of Bethany whom we find, in the episode related by St Luke (10:38-42), seated at Our Lord’s feet attentive to His teaching, while her sister Martha busies herself with the obligations of hospitality. Modern scholars dispute this, but the Oratory Parish Magazine is no place for the propagation of newfangled notions and if the identification of Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany was good enough for St Gregory the Great, then it is good enough for the Provost.
The picture over the altar of St Mary Magdalene in our church depicts her in a cave kneeling by a cross and a skull and is clearly inspired by the tradition that she spent her last decades as a hermit in the south of France dedicating her life to prayer and penance after she and her siblings Martha and Lazarus were exiled from the Holy Land during the earliest persecutions of the Church. And so she is venerated as a special patroness of the contemplative life.
The scene in St Luke’s Gospel, in which Martha complains to Our Lord that Mary sits idle while her sister works her fingers to the bone is a foretaste of a certain prejudice against the contemplative vocation. The worldly mindset can never be expected to appreciate how a life which contributes nothing that seems tangibly productive to the outside world can possibly be of any serious benefit to the body politic. And so, historically, wherever the ideals of freemasonry have gained ascendency, we have seen nominally Catholic rulers intervening to dissolve the contemplative religious houses.
But in the Gospel Our Lord corrects Martha. “Mary has chosen the good portion,” He says, “which will not be taken away from her” (Lk 10:42). That good portion is the life of contemplation. And to appreciate the value of the contemplative life, we need to understand the Church spiritually and supernaturally as the Mystical Body of Christ, into which we are incorporated in Baptism, each with our own vocation and particular role to play in preserving and extending the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. The prayers and the penances of those who detach themselves from earthly distractions, and who embrace the life of radical austerity so that they might devote all of their resources to cultivating the life of friendship with God, which is the very essence of the Christian life, are of priceless value to the Church on earth and to the world in general. If and when, by God’s Grace, we ourselves contemplate God face to face in eternity then we shall all see how many blessings were merited for us by the mortifications and intercessions of all those holy monks, nuns and hermits.
The secular world does not feel any gratitude, but it should. The Catechism of the Catholic Church warns us that there are sins that cry to Heaven. And any society which enshrines those sins in the laws of the realm is recklessly courting the peril of divine chastisement. In recent weeks our Parliament in this country voted to proceed with legislation allowing abortion up to and during birth, and then a few days later to legalise so called “euthanasia”. One of the sins that cries to Heaven is wilful murder. While fastening our seatbelts for the coming retribution, however, we should also remember that God promised to withhold His wrath if only Abraham could present him with ten just men in Sodom (cf. Gen 18:20-32), and we can thank God for those who have devoted themselves to a consecrated life of prayer and penance.
But what about poor Martha? Despite her impatience with her sister in the Gospel, Martha is also venerated as a great saint, which means that she too must have learned to partake of that “good portion” of contemplation. While a chosen minority are called to serve the Mystical Body of Christ by means of a radical separation from the outside world, Our Lord’s words to Martha should speak to all of us, because she represents those of us who are called to cultivate that “good portion” even in our own busy lives by making time for silence and prayer. We have to be disciplined to achieve this. But if we reflect seriously on the various useless distractions which most of us allow to clutter our lives and our minds, then we shall find that time, and God will use it well. Our Lord does not condemn the active life. But He would save us from the plague of frenetic “activism” that obstructs the channels of communication with our Creator.
In his Epistle to the Colossians St Paul tells us “in my sufferings I make up for those things which are lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of His Body – that is the Church” (Col 1:24-28). St Paul, the great theologian, is not suggesting for a moment that there was anything deficient in the Passion of Our Lord. What he is teaching us is that our own sacrifices, penances, and prayers are of immense value in building the Kingdom of Heaven if we unite them with the saving Sacrifice of Our Lord.
It is a principle in the Christian life that if we give something small to God in sincerity and purity of heart, He gives to us a great return. God is a gentleman, which means He prefers not to force His way into our hearts, but waits for us to invite him. Asking for the intercession of St Mary Magdalene, may we resolve to devote some quality time to cultivating that “good portion” of intimate friendship with Our Lord in silence and prayer. And pray for more vocations to the contemplative life.
Father Julian Large