UNDER MARY MAGDALEN'S MANTLE

 

Content Warning: The following brief post has disquieting themes, and mentions child sex abuse, rape and prostitution. It is based on my experiences doing pro-life work. I'd advise you not to read it if discussion of the above takes your peace. 

Perhaps we dwell too much on Mary Magdalen's past - it is thought that she was promiscuous and maybe was a prostitute - before she met Christ. We know she was possessed, she entered salvation history in the eighth chapter of St Luke's Gospel where it is stated that "seven devils had gone out from her". When she was free from the demons that occupied her and from the men who used her body, she turned her life over to serve Christ slavishly, and ministered to Him and the apostles. It is even inferred at times that the money she earned from her former ways were used to provide for their material needs.

Mary Magdalen was under the Cross with Our Lady and John-the-Beloved, she participated in the burial and she was given the awesome privilege of being the first to witness the risen Lord and also the first to bring word of His resurrection to the apostles, which earned her the title "apostle to the apostles." While I don't want to make the celebration of her feast day all about Mary Magdalen's life before her deliverance, I'd like to show how her help from heaven to those who struggle like she did, is so very direly needed today. In the years I did pro-life work, I saw her intercession first hand. 

I remember a very young woman coming to the pro-life center, and I was impressed that she was so well-dressed and had such poise. She was a natural beauty. She wasn't well-educated but had been coached as to witty repartee and could hold a lively conversation, even if it felt like she was playing a part. She worried she was pregnant, when it was ascertained that she wasn't, she wept tears of relief because she said she needed to keep earning money from being an escort and a pregnancy was too long a break. 

When I got to know her, I discovered that like so many just like her she'd had early, pernicious sex abuse, and an absent mother. She'd learned early that she had to do certain things and let things be done to her in order to get food or just to avoid punishment. Her brain had been wired before she could run that sex is something that is to be traded for basic needs. Now that she was in her 20s, she'd met a mature woman who was a mother substitute, and was happily taking her earnings from her nights out with wealthy men. She explained to me that she was in high demand because when she came across as a genuine date, her male customers were able to pass her off as a pretty woman who had accepted their dinner invite. 

The link, I've observed, between early child sex abuse and "sex work" is that many women - and men - who've been abused in early childhood seek out a parent figure - who might just put them to work in the oldest profession so they can get quick money. They withhold love and affection if their victim is unwilling to continue and the cycle perpetuates itself; they emotionally blackmail the young woman or man. The problem starts when their victim gets older, gets sick or gets pregnant, which is when I met them. 

The young prostitute is often hellbent on having the abortion so that they can meet "the needs" of the person who is playing the role of their mother and/or father. They are under the direction of an arch-manipulator and they become just as manipulative by way of example. As they get older, more bitter and cynical, they often groom a younger successor who becomes their substitute child, and they teach them the tricks of the trade. 

But before they get totally in hoc to their pimp and before they have put in years, there is a moment of grace, such as when they come to a pro-life clinic because they want some privacy. They are not telling their substitute parent that they are going there. I learned when I was with them that there were very severe limits as to how I could help them, but I did put them squarely into the loving embrace of Mary Magdalen and saw some break free; one case in particular stands out in my mind of a young woman who broke free from an old dame who was the most malevolent person I ever encountered in pro-life work, and that, dear friends, is really saying something. 

Mary Magdalen is not just for women who have been promiscuous. When I was in the thick of it, helping as many as 12-16 pregnant women a day, I was hounded by a man who had a guilty conscience. He'd taken advantage of a girl from a troubled background and she'd had an abortion. Then she left him and would never speak to him - to be fair she feared he'd manipulate her again into pre-marital sex. This young chap was devastated and crippled with self-hatred to the extent I thought he'd die by his own hand. 

In desperation, I asked a British priest who lost patience with me and said, "Not to state the bleeding obvious, Mary, but why aren't you asking the intercession of Mary Magdalen? She's not just for women, you know. " I put the poor fellow under Mary Magdalen's mantle, and he didn't self-harm, he gave up promiscuity and became something of a mild penitent. Well, maybe not so mild, he never recovered to the point of dating again, and has to live out his remaining years alone. I hope that the very, very many who are in his position will take up Mary Magdalen's example, live life under the Cross so that they, like her, may see the resurrection and know a place in salvation history as a witness to Jesus's triumph over death, as they triumph over sexual sin. 

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The classic painting accompanying this post was executed by Pietro da Cortona and is in the public domain.