Psalm 51:1 – “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion.
The Magdalen, a Garden and This
by Kathleen O’Toole
She who is known by myth and association as sinful, penitent, voluptuous perhaps…
but faithful to the last and then beyond.
A disciple for sure, confused often with Mary, sister of Lazarus, or the woman caught
in adultery, or she who angered the men
by anointing Jesus with expensive oils.
She was the one from whom he cast out seven demons—she’s named in that account.
Strip all else away and we know only
that she was grateful, that she found her way to the cross, and that she returned
to the tomb, to the garden nearby, and there, weeping at her loss, was recognized, became known in the tender invocation
of her name. Mary: breathed by one whom she mistook for the gardener, he
who in an instant brought her back to herself—
gave her in two syllables a life beloved, gave me the only sure thing I’ll believe of heaven, that if it be, it will consist
in this: the one unmistakable rendering of your name.
Source: “The Magdalen, a Garden and This” by Kathleen O’Toole from America
Magazine Vol. 186 No. 11 (4/1/2002).
Rise Up
Andra Day
Missed last week’s Lenten devotional? Read Woke…to “the Struggle”
