Mystical Longing

                         

St. Mary Magdalene has long been my favorite saint, but I have had a hard time putting into words why she so touches my heart.  Is it that I identify with her life experience?  Is it because she was loyal while being maligned by the early church fathers?  Is it because she loved without doubt, shame or apology?  I don't know, but something I recently read shed some light on her appeal for me.    

In an article entitled Love and Longing:  The Feminine Mysteries of Love author Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee points out the dual nature of love, masculine and feminine.  He believes the masculine side of love is "I love you" while love's feminine side is "I am waiting for you; I am longing for you."  And he, along with the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing,  believes that the feminine voice of love has a significant role in the receptive, mystical journey of longing.  That nameless, oft quoted author of The Cloud of Unknowing put it simply:

"Your whole life must be one of longing."

And Vaughan-Lee believes that for Christianity, Mary Magdalene embodies this longing:

"After the crucifixion she stood at the empty sepulchre, where he had been buried, weeping. And when Jesus, risen from the dead, came and spoke to her, saying "Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?" she first mistook him for a gardener until he called her by name, "Mary," and then she "turned herself and said 'Rabboni,' which is to say, Master."

This meeting between Mary Magdalene and Christ depicted over and over again in art (noli-me-tangere) is perhaps the sweetest, most poignant interaction Christ had with another human being while on earth.  It is a tender human story of intimacy, longing and joy veiled with unfulfilled desire.   It is sensuous and convincing.  Mary Magdalene was the first to see the risen Christ not because of her power and authority, but because of her longing.  She was there because she longed; without it, she would have been asleep with all the others.  As Vaughan-Lee says "it is this inner feminine attitude of the heart, of longing and devotion that she embodies, that opens the lover to the transcendent mystery of love in which suffering and death are the doorway to a higher state of consciousness. The lover waits weeping for the Beloved to reveal His true nature."

We live in an inpatient world; we demand instant gratification and fulfillment; we disavow our feminine natures and apologize even to our psychologists for any evidence of passivity that manifests itself in our relationships.  We resolve to assert rather than accept our unfulfilled desires for intimacy.  We seek to overcome, deny or  correct our longings, shamed by our modesty.  But have we lost some transcendent mystery of the human heart in dismissing the value of longing?  Have we hidden in fear from the best parts of ourselves - those parts that might show us truth and set us free?    Vaughan-Lee says:

 "We are conditioned to avoid pain, but for the mystic the pain of the heart is the thread that leads us, the song of the soul that uncovers us. Meister Eckhart said, 'God is the sigh in the soul,' and this sigh, this sorrow, is a most precious poison. How love heals us from the sufferings we inflict upon ourself is always a mystery. Love cannot be understood by the mind just as it cannot be contained by the ego. Love is the power that opens and transforms us, that intoxicates and bewilders us. Love leads us deeper, away from the prison of our limited self to the freedom and wholeness of our divine nature. In the words of the Sufi saint Jâmî, "Never turn away from love, not even love in a human form, for love alone will free you from yourself."