Lenten Letter

Dear Mary of Magdala,

I hear your voice sometimes, softly, almost like a whisper in a dream. Straining to hear you I close my eyes, try to block out all the other voices that want to tell me you're just a whore, therefore easily dismissed. Whore or not, you were there at the cross, when so many others fled. You were there in the garden seeking your teacher and friend. You were there in the Upper Room, I am sure of it, praying, united with the other women, the disciples, and with his mother, who shares your name.

When your voice comes it's like a vigilant breeze. I turn my head to focus, but I can hear no words, only the sound of anxious misery, your tone full of desperation. That we will acknowledge this one we love and worship and claim to follow is still speaking, still teaching, still loving, still bleeding. I lean in, strain to hear. You point with your voice, your cries. Everywhere you point, there is your beloved, Jesus. The Man of Sorrows suffering in solidarity with the marginalized, the oppressed, the displaced, the cast out.

Now all I can hear is Jesus' cries with the women and children being slaughtered in the streets of Mariupol. Yet I see him in the soldiers as well, the ones whose eyes reveal they have misgivings about what they are ordered to do.

There he is at rest in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, finally experiencing a reprieve after so much war and desolation.

He is there with the Rohingya of Myanmar and the Uyghur of China. In fact, with all those who have been discredited, mocked, gathered up, sent away, killed, ignored and forgotten. The ones far away and the ones near, here among us.

It is your voice that is so present, dear Mary of Magdala, during this particular season of Lent. The season where we remember the reality of life and death for Jesus. We try to heed the call to selfless love, which none of us can ever fully embody--at least not on this side of that thin veil between here and the eternal realm.

Your voice is always there, has always been. Teach us to listen, to close our eyes, to lean in and hear with our whole being. For you show us where the hurt is, and there we see Jesus. You speak of the small kindnesses that are shared between enemies. You still pray, along with Jesus, his mother, Mary, and all the saints, longing for the possibilities that divine love can unleash. That this world Jesus lived, died and lives for still would welcome what is good and true and holy, would heal from hatred. That we would gather together and feast on that glorious day of Resurrection, celebrating the gift of life, abundant life for all people.

Dear Mary, I pray this with you, too.