She hath loved much.She hath loved much.
The Tender Heart of Repentance
Sad over the Veiled Past
Mary of Magdala, will you let us draw in outline the picture we find of you in the holy records of your Lord’s life? We shall not lift the veil, as some have tried to do, and give those earlier days which the Gospel has set forth in vague, yet sufficiently serious, words. You had been a sinner, you would admit, a great sinner, and, in humble sorrow at your sad straying away but in contented peace at your blessed return, you would own to the title given to you by the Evangelists. Judas was the one who betrayed the Master; John was the one whom Jesus loved; you were the one from whom “He had cast seven devils.” You had fallen low; that the perfect number, “seven,” tells us, but you had risen high, that we know from the perfect casting out by His power. Not in the dark days then before He came, but in those after days, bright with repentance and love and loyal service, shall we read your life and see in it the working of your scarred but tender heart.
Silent in Service
We have not many words of yours set down for us. Rather were you silent. On that wonderful day in your life when you knew “He sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house,” when you made full answer to His call and came, you came in silence and you worked in silence. Your sighs and sobs may have been heard, but you tried, we doubt not, to suppress even them for His sake and to avoid others noting you when they should be, as you were, wholly taken up with Him. On that wonderful day you found your place at His feet and you took it in silence, and as you were on that day, so you were ever afterward – in silence, at His feet. He would speak, and you would listen. You had no thoughts, no words, no looks for aught else. You would not look at the past or think of it. When the deer has wandered over barren fields and worked its way through dense underbrush and after hours and hours of struggle comes suddenly upon the murmur and freshness of running waters, who would look for it to turn aside from that flowing feast and not rather plunge and hold fast in the cool currents dry lips and parched tongue? Such you were, panting after the fountain of waters. So your soul panted after God. The words of the Psalmist would come to you: “My soul hath thirsted after the strong living God; when shall I come and appear before the face of God? My tears have been my bread day and night, whilst it is said to me daily: Where is thy God?” You were silent because your soul was beside the running waters. You had left sin and had eyes for the sinless One alone. You had abandoned the unholy affection of men and abided forevermore in the presence of the love of your God.
Generous in Sacrifice
You were not simply silent about the past, but you broke with it utterly, with all its memories, with all its methods. Your new life was to be spent at the feet of Christ and there you brought everything and in generous, final sacrifice cast all before Him. Your precious ointment was poured upon His feet, and the alabaster box was broken that no part of the sacrifice might be held back. Tears filled your eyes and shed their more precious fragrance in glistening streams upon the lavished ointment. Upon the same altar you made offering of still fairer gifts; there were gently laid the loosened tresses, and there your lips touched in the oblation of true love.
Abject in Consecration
We doubt not that you put your whole life beneath His feet, and as afterwards thousands with the cry of “Hosanna” spread their garments before Him that He might tread upon them, so you cast your heart beneath His feet, should He desire to crush that bruised thing, which indeed He never would do. Yet you were willing it should be thus. You would reconsecrate your life to Him, and the heart with all its love, and the body with all the beauty God gave it, that before this drew men away from God by their brilliancy, would now attract men to God. Their holocaust made a more resplendent glory in the sight of earth and Heaven. The instruments of sin became the instruments of reparation and sanctity.
Purified by Trials
You met in your new life what all meet who “will live godly in Christ Jesus.” Your silence was to be tested and your sacrifice made pure by opposition. You were misjudged and misunderstood. It was not strange the Pharisee should have thought you still a sinner and wondered that Christ, the new Prophet, allowed you near him. Stranger it was that the Apostles should oppose you in what had become your practice, anointing the Lord, as you did in life and after death, but they were led astray by Judas, He by greed and they by short-sighted charity objected to this honor to Christ. Today we have so-called friends of the poor who rob them of Christ, a possession of the soul for life and eternity, for a few cents’ worth of “bodily pleasure. You did more for Christ’s poor by securing to them belief in Christ’s Godhead and leading them to seek from Him consolation of soul than you would do by any passing solace for the body in food or drink or clothing. Again you were tried and now not by Pharisee or Apostle, but by your own sister. We do not know well her motives. No doubt she was overworked and tired. She had all the responsibility of the hostess, the anxious care of the Guest. She did not know that Christ was content with simpler service. She spoke in vexation, and we hope your saintly sister had no jealous feelings, but only a desire for your assistance that time, when you took your usual station at His feet.
Zealous, Though Gentle
Silence, sacrifice and suffering, they stand out in your Gospel life. Are we wrong in thinking that they show to us the tenderness of your heart? If you yielded to the pressure of evil where all was easy, you were more prompt, more responsive in yielding to the attractiveness of good, where it was hard to offer all and in return to meet with opposition, and still the while to be quiet and silent at Christ’s feet. Nor must we think your tenderness was all passive. When there was need, you showed yourself to be a true sister of Martha. You forced your way to the foot of the Cross and on the day Christ, your Lord, rose from the dead, we hardly know you for the silent, patient one we saw before. That morning you had no rest at all, and every one heard your repeated, anxious cry, “They have taken my Lord away, and I know not where they have laid Him.” Courage and fearless “zeal go with tenderness of heart. We have read of a woman facing and slaying a venomous snake in order to defend her pupils, and then swooning away when she had succeeded. In a similar way your tenderness responded to the gentle address, “Mary,” and as you had been active before, now again you slipped to your former place at Christ’s feet, clinging to them, as His words to you show us, just as you did in the Pharisee’s house long before.
The Tender Heart of Mercy
Forgetting All Quilt
Did we address Mary of Magdala in that fashion, we can very well imagine what answer she would make. “Speak not of anything I have done, I, the sinner to whom my Lord was good enough to reach down His hand, to lift up from the soiling earth. Speak not of any good thing in me or in my heart. There is no good thing there of my fashioning. What I made of my heart, my Lord in His kindness bids me now remember no longer because through His mercy the number of my transgressions which rivalled the multitudinous flakes of the snow, and the hue of my sins which was as scarlet to His pure eyes, both are no more. The hideous, hectic rout has been swallowed up more utterly than the Egyptians of old in the waters of the Red Sea.
Condescending to the Fallen
“No, speak not of any tenderness of mine which has more shame to it than it has honor, but speak rather of His tenderness, think of and dwell upon the delicate, quivering sensitiveness of His Heart of love. If I were silent at His feet, it was out of abashed wonder at His condescension. That He regarded me at all, that He permitted me that station, was so great a favor that I was left breathless and helpless. Words would be vain, and what words should my soiled lips form and my sinful voice utter? Silence befitted me, but mark His tenderness. He had stooped down to my bruised life, which was like a reed trodden upon, and raised it aloft and gave to it wholeness again. The breath of His love played upon the soot and black ashes of my scorched life, as so much burning flax, and amid grimy smoke found the smouldering spark and made it leap into newer, purer flames.
Eloquent for the Silent
“Nor did His tenderness stop there. When I was silent, He spoke for me. Such strange, such large, such divine words! His own goodness He described when He said, ‘Many sins are forgiven her because she hath loved much/ His own graciousness He spoke of when He made mention of what He Himself had given me, ‘Mary hath chosen the best part.’ And as if all this were not enough for the sinner in whose heart seven devils had taken up their abode, He in His divine mercy deigned to tell His Apostles: ‘She hath wrought a good work unto Me. Wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached in the whole world, that also what she hath done, shall be told for a memory of her.’ What need had I for aught, unless it were for deeper, profounder silence, when His tender Heart gave utterance to such speech?
Gracious for Trifling Sacrifices
“Then you speak of my sacrifices. Sacrifices of what? A bruised teed, a smoking flax, a wasted life? It was no sacrifice to give; it was a favor that He should accept. Compare not the clean, precious vesture of His enthusiastic followers to what I threw before Him. That was the fitting place for my soiled heart, not for their bright robes. If He found it better wayfaring on the stained tissues of my life than on the rough, black roads of mankind, it was again not anything from me, but everything from His kindness. My life and all the gifts He gave me and that I abused, were honored in being permitted to serve Him and wait upon Him and be consecrated to Him. And did you not mark His tenderness here too? Have you not known a tender mother in her great love for her child to be so good as to be interested, to grow enthusiastic, to be gladly appreciative when he laid before her a bit of glass or some other such worthless trifle he had picked up in the dust of the wayside? The mother was gracious; the child was overjoyed. Such was the tenderness of my Lord’s Heart to me. He noted, He dwelt upon each and all of my trifles and was pleased. ‘She with tears hath washed My feet and with her hair hath wiped them. She hath not ceased to kiss My feet. She with ointment hath anointed My feet/ Surely He who remembers every little act and numbers them and makes so much of them; surely He has a Heart more tender than a mother’s.
Champion of the Sinner
“My sufferings are mentioned. Ah, I suffered not from the opposition of others, from rash judgments or misunderstandings. Others never treated me as harshly as I deserved, and what if they had? The severest attacks were nothing to me now. I was as one over whom had swept a violent storm but who was then at peace. The storm of the new opposition came not into my soul. It seemed to me far away. The lightning flash glowed faintly and the thunder was only a gentle murmur. Around me was the refreshed air and the clear sky and the bright warmth of a sun, new-born out of a tempest. I was in the sunlight and exhilaration of His presence, and, resting there, the violence of the storm did not ruffle the calm or break in upon the hush of my peace. Most of all I minded not opposition because He became my defender. How could I ever have been thought worthy of that boon from Him? I was not worthy, but out of the overflowing tenderness of His Heart He flew to my defence as He guarded promptly, eagerly, all those whom He gathered under His wings. The death of my brother drew tears from His eyes. He was in a moment to call him back to life, but that immediate joy did not restrain His tears. No heart of man could have or dream of such tenderness. As with my griefs, so with all that threatened me He acted as defender. Neither could any defence be better or fuller or more thoughtful and tender. Finally, in His last battle, He fought for me and He fought for you and for us all with His Heart. He put His Heart between us and our sins, although their sight was enough to cause Its tenderness to shrink in terror and drive Its blood out upon His body. He put His Heart upon the Cross and laid It open to the hard, sharp spear. “He went down to His death in defence of us all, and sacrifice and suffering is little, nay, ho return for his tender kindness.”