According to Mary Magdalene by Marianne Fredriksson

Author:Marianne Fredriksson [Fredriksson, Marianne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

When they had all again assembled in the pergola the next day, Paul firmly took the floor.

“I've thought a great deal about what you said about his love including everyone at every moment and on every occasion. But there are contradictions that are hard to comprehend in what he was preaching. When he received the message that his adherents had come to see him, he said—‘Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?' He said to the man who wished to go and bury his father—'Let the dead bury the dead.’

“And they say he said—'Think not that I have come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace but a sword. For I have come to set a man at variance against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.' Have you also heard him say this?”

“Yes.” Mary's voice was clear and unhesitating.

“How do you explain that?”

“I can only tell you how I see it.”

Paul nodded and Mary went on. “I have previously told you of his wanderings in the desert. He said it was not until he first went there that he realized other people could not hear the voice of God in the way it constantly spoke to him.”

“That must have been frightening?” Paul sounded thoughtful. Mary nodded and went on.

“Yes. But it also provided him with important knowledge. He said he at last understood why people had made so many regulations and laws. Perhaps another insight also came to him. And he came to see that strong family ties entail a danger.”

She hesitated before going on.

“With us it is an almost total blending with our parents, and a tremendously stern demand for obedience. That in all layers in life, honoring your father and mother can lead to us remaining…immature.”

She went on hesitantly.

“But most of all, I think he turned against the way we reduce love to personal ties. He also said it is easy to love your nearest, but hard to love your nearest when you met him as a shabby beggar or a criminal.”

Paul looked doubtful, but suddenly Simon Peter spoke up.

“That was what he demanded of my brother and me. He said, ‘Follow me' and we did. We abandoned Father and his fishing boats…no one should think that was easy. Mother wept and Father raged. He needed us in his work, but we betrayed him and that was a shameful deed. Nearly everyone in Capernaum despised us.”

Mary gave Paul a warm look and said: “It was the same for me. I had to write a letter to my stepmother to tell her I was not coming back. She had been good to me, a foundling she took care of as if I had been her own. And I knew she needed me. She was just moving back to Greece and I was to be her support in her loneliness and old age.”

Mary's eyes filled with tears, but pulling herself together, she went on.

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