Mary Magdalene Revealed by Meggan Watterson

Author:Meggan Watterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hay House
Published: 2019-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

No One Was There to Witness the Witness

And Desire said, “I did not see you go down, yet now I see you go up. So why do you lie since you belong to me?” The soul answered, “I saw you. You did not see me nor did you know me. You mistook the garment I wore for my true self. And you did not recognize me.”

— MARY 9:2–6

I want to return to the resurrection, again. It is so much more significant than we have ever given it credit for—that Mary and Christ were together first when he resurrected. That he came back to her, for her. Or this is how I see it.

Mary Magdalene exclaims in Hebrew, “Rabboni!”—or Teacher—according to John 20:16. After he calls out to her, after she recognizes him by hearing her name in his voice. This is an intimate exchange. She is his witness, not by accident. She is there because she is a part of the story of how and why he was able to rise.

And then Christ says the line that has confused so many for so long: Noli me tangere, Latin for, as many have translated it, do not touch me. A more apt translation is, do not cling to me. And this is what makes sense in the trajectory of his ministry.

He was all about sitting with outcasts, eating with untouchables, and drinking from the well with the Samaritan woman. It just makes zero sense that suddenly, once no longer incarnate, he would get squeamish over a woman’s touch, a woman he loved the most.

This has been misinterpreted to emphasize Christ’s purity and chastity (and also women’s power to defile the holy). And it has been held up as further proof of Mary’s “sinful” status as the penitent prostitute. The idea is that Christ is telling her, essentially, don’t touch me because I haven’t ascended to god yet, meaning, you might mess with my ascension.

Artistic depictions of this moment, for example Italian Renaissance artist Correggio’s Noli Me Tangere, place Christ above Mary, who is usually below him on her knees or at his feet. Christ’s one hand is pointed up, indicating his ascension, and his other hand is, well, giving Mary the hand. He’s depicted as blocking her from coming near him.

But there’s a different translation of this moment that has to do with the spiritual path he had mastered and that he had led Mary Magdalene through, to completion. The kenotic path, a spiritual path of self-emptying love. The core practice of this path is to not cling to anything. Not even to her own beloved, Christ. It’s to disengage “the egoic operating system” and “upgrade” consciousness by descending into the heart.

In Christian theology, kenosis is the Greek word for the act of emptying. It’s the act of releasing the ego’s idea, or will, and allowing the divine will to act through us. But how do we do this? When we are gripped by something or someone the ego desires, how

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