St Mary Magdalene as Type of the OT Transition to New

What if St Mary Magdalene is a New Testament type of the Jewish People, first in their transition from the Old to the New Law (the stoning), and then in their conversion at the end of the world (the tomb scene).

How? Let us probe it.

St Mary Magdelene Symbolizing OT to NT Transitions

The following is a summary of the above article:

Negative Old Testament Laws

Firstly, and unfortunately, God had to instantiate many negative Old Testament laws that were physically not His ultimate desire but that were necessary to meet a child humanity where they were at. More specifically, just as a child must first learn through illustration before graduating to abstract written words without images, so God needed to give His first People physical pictures that were mere images of what would really matter later: spiritual realities. In other words, the mere physical laws, when they pointed to negative spiritual realities, were themselves also negative and, in fact, things that God would not ultimately want in His eventual Plan in fullness.

Some examples of these were the death penalty for serious sin, the taking of the Holy Land by bloody and universal slaughter, down even to the infants, and the ostracization of the lepers from the regular community. Each of these points to a negative spiritual reality, as follows:

The Death Penalty

The ultimate end of serious sin is eternal death in hell. But the early People are not ready for this, so God must give them a picture as the next best thing, which is clearly physical death, hence the death penalty for various, severe sins.

The Bloody Take-over of the Holy Land

The taking of the Holy Land by blood-curdling force is not what liberals say it is: a mere human fashioning that the Jewish people thought God wanted. That is based on Enlightenment heresy, which sees religion as man trying to find God instead of as God coming down to man. Rather, this difficult passage most likely means that when the Church, the New People is about to conquer a land for Christ, spiritually, once it is converted, every last jot and title of its cultural and religious errors that cannot be transformed into something reconcilable to the Gospel must be spiritually slaughtered, massacred by the New Adam and Eve, by the flaming sword of the supreme Archangel, that the blood of these diabolical errors might flow down into eternal fire, that they may be consumed by God’s wrath and destroyed, so that the People there cannot be corrupted by them. For does not the Church massacre even the smallest of heresies since her inception, knowing that the tiniest cancer may in the end destroy the whole person?

The Unclean Community

As for the ostracization of the phylsically unclean from the clean community, in order that the clean community may not be infected by the unclean, how much more should those heretics who are publicly and spiritually unclean be cast out from the true and clean community, lest they infect the true sheep with errors and sin.

St Mary Magdalene at the Stoning: Transition from Old to New

Consequently, St. Mary Magdalene at her stoning is revealing the transition to the New Law: Jesus is unveiling, as we all know, that even though the death penalty shows, in a beginning sense. the ultimate consequences of serous sin [from physical death to eternal death in hell], nevertheless God’s ultimate desire is for Him to show the sinner loving mercy, to forgive, and to help the person be healed of sin and move on to live in the love of God, away from the wrong doing, and hopefully in natural death, transition to eternal life. This is clearly one of the greatest lessons of Old to New Law in the Gospels.

St Mary Magdalene at the Tomb: The Conversion of the Jews at the End

With this behind us, we move on to the next segment, the second scene of this woman of faith, the empty tomb. Here, as we know, she is in agony that the Christ is not there. She is expecting an Old Testament solution to the Passion. It is not on the radar screen that the Master has risen, never to die. Yet, when this Master, who is both fully Divine and fully human, stands before her, she does not “recognize” Him. Why? Let us consider it.

Jesus’ Old and New Bodies: Images of Old and New Testament Realities

Christ’s Old Body and events of the Gospel before the Resurrection filled up all that is of the Old Covenant—the Laws, the history, and such. At the Cross, however, His Body, and thereby all things Old, were put to death and abolished. “And he shall confirm the covenant with many, in one week: and in the half of the week the victim and the sacrifice shall fall”[Dan 9:27] But, through the Resurrection, rather than totally and radically different, the Old Law came to life again in the New Resurrected Body of Christ. This Body did not destroy all things old but transformed them into New elements, elements that now truly redeem and matter. Therefore, the New Body of Christ is like the Old Body in many ways but also different. And that means it is not, at first glance, completely recognizable!

Toward this end, we ask again, is the New Covenant utterly disjoint and unrecognizable from the Old? No! For, in fact, some elements of the Old remain, namely, amongst other possible things, the base principles of the Law that Christ called out repeatedly to those who petitioned Him—what commandments are most important (Love the Lord your God with your whole being and your neighbor as yourself). Hence, effectively, the Decalogue is still in force. Also, whereas most of the other elements are no longer binding in and of themselves (disciplinary or ceremonial aspects of the Law), they have all been fulfilled, or elevated, to new forms that bear some resemblance to the old but have been transformed spiritually!

But this is the very thing we see in the Resurrected Body of Christ! The Resurrected Body of Christ is, again, not utterly disconnected from the Old Body of Christ! It is the same Body but simply transfigured and elevated! Consequently, precisely because it has transformed elements and characteristics, it is to some degree different from the old Body and therefore, at least initially, hard to recognize!

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St Mary Magdalene at the Tomb

And hence, we return to our beloved St Mary Magdalene and that wonderful exposition of this reality in weeping presence at the tomb. We all know the story: Jesus speaks to Mary three times, and progressively she recognizes Him.

More specifically, St. Mary Magdalene’s inability to recognize Jesus at the tomb, her progressive hope in Christ, and thirdly, the final culmination of recognizing Him at the utterance of Jesus, “Mary!”, can be an image of the Jewish relationship to the Messiah in the entire course of the history of the Church.

This would imply, since there are three exchanges, like the three days of Jesus in the Tomb, three chapters of Jewish history during the Church: early Church, intermediate Church, and final Church history, or that is, our ways of the sint, which we shall see as the three phases of darkness of the Church: the purgative way [pagan Rome], the dark night of the soul [our modern minor apostasy], and martyrdom [the great apostasy].

At each juncture, the Savior, the Messiah, is appealing to the weeping woman, His bride:

Messiah: “Woman, why do you weep?”

Mary:“They have taken my Lord and I do not know where they have laid Him!”

People of Old: “The Messiah was supposed to be here. The Messiah was supposed to have come. We had the prophecies, the times, but He is not here. He did not come. We do not where He is!”

This can be the first phase of Church history, the purgative way. In this first phase, pagan Rome, the Jews knew through prophecy, especially Daniel, that the Messiah was supposed to have come, and He did not. Too, they were expecting an Old Messiah, a political redeemer, just as Mary is expecting an Old Christ in the tomb. Their situation is hopeless, and their relationship to Jesus and the Christians is one of hostility and enmity. Christ is not on the radar map at this time.

Messiah: ”Woman, why do you weep?”

Mary: “Sir, if you know where they have taken Him, then please tell me in order that I may go and anoint Him.”

People of Old: “Sir, we still do not recognize you as Our Savior. But perhaps you are a person [the gardener] who can help us find the Messiah, find where they have laid Him!”

Once again as per above, most fully approved private revelation suggests that we are at an intermediate crossroads of Church history, a certain dark night of the soul. The modern godless crisis will give way to a great renewal, even if it requires a chastisement of epic proportions. This renewal will bring the fullness of the Gentiles, a near worldwide Catholic civilization of love, the Triumph of Our Lady of Fatima’s Immaculate Heart.

Too, the Jewish history has taken a positive turn: a great portion of the Hebrew people now have repossession of the Holy Land that they had lost so many centuries ago by the Divine chastisement of Temple destruction and diaspora, which was an allowed consequence of the Jewish inability to recognize the coming of their Savior.

Too, Jewish/Christian relations are renewed. Jews still do not recognize Christ as their Messiah; they do not fully acknowledge the Risen Savior who still stands before them apocalyptically; they continue to weep that they do not know where the Savior is. But, I think it is fair to say that many now regard Christ as a good man who can help them find the Savior, as it were (the gardener?). In fact, in the wake of the incomprehensible horrors of the Holocaust, the Church has reached out to Her elder brethren in friendship, filial affection, and respect. (Popes visiting synagogues and such, is unheard of for centuries).

Technically, Christ’s call to the Jewish People for conversion has not been abrogated as some well-meaning individuals with a very understandable but misguided compassion may insinuate, but neither does the Church look upon her beloved seed of God’s Covenant with condemnation, knowing that:

The Jewish People are not yet fully culpable historically for conversion to the Gospel
Leaving the case of any individual Jewish person to that person and the mercy of God, we realize that the mystery of a person’s conscience carries with it its limited and complex experiences both in positive and negative dimensions
In the end, one can be saved by the implicit desire for Baptism—which, at the end of the day is simply, “Lord, show me the way; Lord, help me follow the way”
And finally, remembering that the Father in the great parable does not condemn the older son in his understandable jealousy at the return of the converted, reprobate younger son (the older son being the Jews and the younger Son, the Gentiles), he rather pleads with the older son to come into the house and celebrate the redemption of his younger brother!
Hence, the second, middle scene between Jesus and Mary Magdalene can be our same, nodern, intermediate phase of Church history, the dark night of the soul.

Messiah: “Mary!”

People of Old and Mary: “Rabboni!”

Finally, at the end of the world, the ultimate déjà vu enters in: the New Testament Antichrist (the final history of the Church before the Second Coming of Christ) fulfills Old Testament Antichrist, Antiochus IV Epiphanies (the final history of the Jews before the First Coming of Christ), bringing the ultimate spiritual victory: the opening of the eyes of the Jews.

In conclusion, I argue that St Mary Magdalene images the Jewish People both in initial transition from Old to New and, in her weeping heart at the empty tomb, the final conversion of the Jewish People.