Though Mary of Magdala is a well-known figure in the gospels, she is not introduced by name until Jesus’s crucifixion in John’s Gospel (John 19:25). John doesn’t explain who she is, or what her relationship is to Jesus or his family, but there she is, with John and Mary, Jesus’s mother. That alone says how important she was to Jesus’s inner circle.
In fact, Mary of Magdala is the only other woman besides Jesus’s mother who is identified in all four Gospels. In total, she is mentioned twelve times, with her name almost always placed first, underscoring her prominence and importance among Jesus’s followers.
Luke’s Gospel identifies Mary’s hometown as Magdala, an affluent Hellenistic city in the Galilee, where Josephus also lived for a time. According to Luke, there were certain women who had been healed of “evil spirits and infirmities,” among whom was
“Mary who is called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone forth.”
Luke 8:2 (YLT)
Evidently, Mary’s earliest encounter with Jesus was as a deeply afflicted woman with a little-understood ailment.
As deeply as she was afflicted so profoundly was she freed by Jesus. Imagine the gratitude and love Mary must have had for her Savior. Mary, along with two other named women, and “many others,” left their homes and traveled with Jesus and the Twelve, as Jesus
“was going through every city and village, preaching and proclaiming good news of the reign of God.”
Luke 8:1 (YLT)
Like the five men called to be disciples at the beginning of John’s Gospel, and the woman at the well in Samaria in Chapter 4, Mary of Magdala’s story includes all twelve elements unique to Jesus’s call.
John has put it on record that Jesus called women as his disciples and commissioned them to apostolic ministry just as he did with men, and we can do no less today.
This is the final piece to the four-part video series outlining the astonishing story John told of Jesus calling women to be his disciples, and commissioning this women to an apostolic ministry. The whole series can be viewed on YouTube under the playlist “Women Disciples of Jesus.”
Sister Joanne-in-Christ Jesus; her story is indeed dramatic and was by no measure typical of her time, some might even say it was a bit radical! Let’s face it, that anyone being possessed by demons “would stand out in a crowd” but thankfully that isn’t a standard daily occurrence for most! We have to admit, if we’re going to “face reality head-on” there’s nothing about our Lord’s time here as the Christ that was any less than radical, the whole ministry of Jesus Christ was a radical shift, for the better mind you; from all the preceding history of mankind in its fallen state here on earth! But this shift was all for the better, in that it meant “great changes” were in the works to “remove the shackles of death” from humanity and provide “an exhilarating journey” on a “New Path toward eternal life!”
All this change coincides with what I was just thinking this morning and then praying about with regard to our present circumstances! I thought how “things have changed so radically” over the last 60 years on this earth and “all of this change directed at or brought on by humanity;” which leads me to the conclusion even aside from Biblical teachings that a “radical shift on both physical and spiritual levels” is taking place at breakneck speed which obviously is heading toward a very “radical and dramatic crescendo!”
The “good news” in all of it is that “God is always in Control,” so great and better things are coming for those who are “awake in Christ and those who are going to be awakened!” Like those demons being cast out of Mary Magdalene, so much needs to be and will be “cast off of mankind” like those “shackles of death” were with the coming of the “Messiah Jesus Christ” who is coming again in His glory!
“Mary who is called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone forth.”
Luke 8:2 (YLT)
Amen.
Brother-in-Christ Jesus, Lawrence
Amen and amen, brother-in-Christ Lawrence, a thousand times amen!
Grace and peace, sister-in-Christ Joanne
Amen I say to you sister-in-Christ Joanne! I feel so happy and exhilarated by this work of yours here and our exchange; because I’m having an epiphany that says, Lawrence you do get hung-up or worry so! And don’t you know that God is totally and always in control, so there really is nothing to fear but fear itself like Winston Churchill said during WWII! Things are going to come out just the way God planned it!
Alleluia!