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Having been rejected by Jesus at every step, she is now unable to even say his name, referring only to "my son." Present at the crucifixion, Mary remembers the gore and her poignant question, "How long will it take?" But she fled the scene with the disciples, fearing arrest. He ignores her, but she cannot get over the thought that she should have done more to save his life.

"You are in great danger," she tells him and begs him to stop preaching. Raising his friend, Lazarus, from the tomb was an even bigger blow because people then began to call him son of God. She warned Jesus not to do the water-into-wine miracle at the wedding in Cana, knowing it would draw unwelcome attention to him. She dismisses the disciples as a "bunch of misfits" and oddballs. This Mary is a mother grieving and angry about the path taken by her son. The play begins with her sitting piously, the familiar blue cloak over her head and shoulders but she soon casts this off to reveal a woman in rough work clothes. While the book seems to slog through Mary's angry "testament," the play, which opened Monday (April 22) at the Walter Kerr Theater, lets actress Fiona Shaw ("True Blood,"''Harry Potter"), in a virtuoso performance, infuse the aging Mary's monologue with intense power and passion. She lives as a virtual prisoner of two of Jesus' disciples, still mourning her son's death, bitter at what has happened since, and seeking consolation from pagan idols, which make more sense to her than what happened to Jesus. The Irish writer, who has written about his strong Catholic childhood, imagines Mary 30 years after the crucifixion of her son.

Well, not yet.Charles Austin writes for Religion News Service. And then there's the kissing of Jesus' feet, an intimate act if there ever was one.īut what does any of this have to do with Mary Magdalene? She wasn't the one with loosened hair weeping at Jesus' feet. Men of Jesus' day would never see a woman with her hair down outside of their wife or a prostitute. James Carroll, writing in Smithsonian Magazine, says that this scene would have had clear sexual overtones to early Christian readers. But the imagery in these verses - of a woman weeping at Jesus' feet, anointing him with perfumed oil and her own tears, while kissing his feet and drying them with her hair - is striking and would have been even more striking back in Jesus' day. Jesus defends the woman, saying that her actions demonstrate her love for and faith in him. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him - that she is a sinner." Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment.

She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. The Twelve, meanwhile, had fled Jerusalem fearing arrest. Other than this introduction in Luke and the Easter morning accounts at the tomb, the only other time that Mary Magdalene is mentioned by name in the Bible is at Jesus' crucifixion, where three of the four gospels specifically say that Mary Magdalene witnessed Christ's suffering along with other women, including Mary the mother of Jesus in one account. "She might well have been shunned by her family." "If she needed to be the recipient of exorcism, that's not surprising," says Chilton. Since Mary Magdalene was included in Jesus' inner circle, she presumably used that firsthand knowledge of being exorcised to testify of this healing experience to others as they traveled and taught.Ĭhilton also thinks the mention of the "seven demons" might also answer one of the lingering questions about Mary Magdalene: Why was she not married or attached to any family members? Other people have demons cast out in the Bible, but none of them are named. "She's the only person named within the whole of the New Testament who is involved with Jesus' exorcisms." "The way she is identified in that passage is really quite fascinating," says Chilton. And here is where we also learn a key detail about Mary Magdalene, that she was exorcised of "seven demons." These verses in Luke are important for several reasons, explains Bruce Chilton, a religion professor at Bard College and author of " Mary Magdalene: A Biography." For starters, it's the only time in the gospels that we learn that Jesus' entourage included women, Mary Magdalene first among them. She was Mary of Magdala, just like Jesus of Nazareth was sometimes called the Nazarene. Mary's last name wasn't Magdalene that was a reference to where she was from, a small fishing village called Magdala on the Sea of Galilee.