MY MARY MAGDALENE MILESTONE

 

This year, the feast of St Mary Magdalene seemed like an ordinary day, but I asked in prayer if I could get to know her better. We traveled to a monastery for confession, and when we arrived the queue had as many as 20 people. So, we went away for lunch and decided to come back later. When we returned, there were only a few souls waiting, and fortunately we confessed in the nick of time. Afterwards, we wandered into the church, offered Vespers with the priests and then they announced that they would bless us with a relic of St Mary Magdalene. Not just any relic either, but a first class relic of hers. Had we been able to confess much earlier, we would not have stayed long enough to be blessed with the relic. 

We knelt at the altar and a lovely young priest presented to each person in turn a glass reliquary lined in red velvet. I kissed the glass, and the priest carefully wiped it with a cloth of linen. Behind the glass there was an ivory piece of bone, that had once been part of Mary Magdalene's skeleton. This is the closest in this life that I will get to meeting Mary Magdalene, the first person to meet the Resurrected Christ. 

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Titian's masterpiece, Noli me tangere accompanies this post.