Good morning…
I am empowered by the deep wisdom I gleaned from our Ignatius House retreat about Mary Magdalene. Mary had sensed God’s inner voice all of her life, a relentless whisper which clashed with the loud male voices in her everyday world. Her father. Her brothers. The powerful men in leadership. Instead of becoming a young wife and an attentive mother in an arranged marriage, which was common in her culture, Mary rejected the normal female roles to invest her whole self in the risk of following Jesus, the healing miracle worker, who had come to her town of Magdala.
Walking along the beach of Lake Galilee, Jesus saw two brothers: Simon (later called Peter) and Andrew. They were fishing, throwing their nets into the lake. It was their regular work. Jesus said to them, “Come with me. I’ll make a new kind of fisherman out of you. I’ll show you how to catch men and women instead of perch and bass.” They didn’t ask questions, but simply dropped their nets and followed (Matthew 4:19-20, MSG).
Mary simply dropped the strong expectations of her family and her male dominated culture. Following along, Mary partnered with Jesus to become a new kind of fisherwoman.
Settling in on Saturday night with a group of about thirty women, I curled up on a couch beneath a blanket to watch the 2019 movie entitled Mary Magdalene. Affirming Mary’s choice to follow God’s gentle, guiding voice, Jesus baptized Mary with these words:
I baptize you with water to cleanse you.
I baptize you with light and with fire.
I baptize you to be born anew, awake, and ready for the day to come.
Valuing her as his equal partner in ministry, Jesus invited Mary to baptize other women with the same enlivening words, with her own tender touch.
As we watch this movie clip right now, what longstanding expectations might we need to drop to be baptized into God’s plan for our lives?
…Sue…
