SAINT MARY MAGDALENA, BENEVOLENT, EQUAL TO THE APOSTLES

2023-07-22 16:55:00, Aktualitet Miron Çako

Dear dear friends, on July 22, the Orthodox Church honors the memory of Saint Mary Magdalene

Saint Mary Magdalene was part of the honorable group of Galilean women who followed our Lord Jesus Christ and helped with everything they had and could, in the divine mission of Christ with the apostles.

Mary is called Magdalene because she was originally from Magdala, a city located in southern Galilee. Many biographers present Mary Magdalene as a sinful woman. You don't know such a fact, but in the Gospel it is said that she was possessed by seven demons from which Jesus saved her, so she dedicated her whole life to the service of the Savior as a thank you.

During the sufferings of Christ, she was also in Jerusalem and followed Jesus foot by foot to Golgotha, walking with the other women of Galilee with the Mother of God, beating her chest. Together with the benefactors, she gave the news of God's resurrection, and she was even the first, because after seeing the stone rolled away from the door of Christ's tomb, she ran to Peter and John and said: "They have taken Jesus from the tomb and we do not know where they have put him." (John 2-20)

She had felt the death of the Savior so deeply in her soul and was so surprised by His resurrection that she continued to cry outside the tomb even after the departure of Peter and John. Longing prompted him to put his head into the tomb and then he saw inside two angels dressed in white clothes standing one at the head and the other at the feet of the place where the body of Jesus had been placed. They said to her: "Woman, why are you crying? Maria answered: Because they took my Lord and I don't know where they put him." (John:20-13).

And while she was saying these things, she felt that someone was behind her. He turned around and saw a man, but he didn't recognize who it was. It was Jesus himself who said to her: "Woman, why are you crying? Which one are you looking for?” (John 20 13) She, remembering that he was not the owner of the garden where the grave was and that he had taken the body, said: "Sir, if you took the body, tell me where they put it, so that I can take it myself." (John 20 15)

And Jesus then revealed himself to her and with his usual and sweet voice addressed Magdalena, calling her by name: "Mary". She immediately recognized him and answered him with longing and joy: "Ravuni", ie. "Teacher" and wanted to touch him, but the Risen Jesus did not allow it, said Mary Magdalene "don't touch me" (Jn. 20:17).

Mary Magdalene had known Jesus only as a man, she had seen miracles performed while Christ was physically present here on earth, so she with her rational logic came to the conclusion; that if He was not physically resurrected with the body He had, she could not hope for blessings, therefore she wanted to touch Him, just as Veronica had done who was suffering from the flow of blood.

God told her "don't touch me" just like a man of flesh, unlike Thomas who allows it. The Risen Lord said; I have not yet ascended to my Father. I mean that when he goes to heaven, the Holy Spirit will be sent down to earth to you, and when that Spirit of truth comes, which proceeds from the Father and is sent down to earth from the Son, will reveal me to you, in your hearts, in a way that you have never known me before, I will be nearer to you than I was able to be when I was here on earth during my life.

The Lord resurrected with the glorified deified body. So Christ after the resurrection, with a glorified body, is met through the mysteries of the Orthodox Church which is the only body of Christ, and especially through the mystery of the Divine Thanksgiving, where we touch him and he comes to us all and transforms us as himself, making us deified according to Grace, Christians similar to himself and adopted sons of the Father.

After the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, the establishment of the Apostolic Church in Jerusalem, Saint Mary Magdalene continued her activity spreading the Gospel.

After the sleep of the Virgin and God-bearing Mary, St. Mary Magdalene settled in Ephesus together with St. John the Theologian where, after a great apostolic activity, she passed away in peace.

The tradition of the red egg and the Easter call: "Christ is risen" are also dedicated to her.

Tradition tells us that she went to Rome to the Emperor Tiberius to denounce the illegal decision of Pilate, who for fear of the Jews, although he knew that Christ was innocent, condemned him to crucifixion as a criminal. (John:19; 1-14)

SAINT MARY MAGDALENA, BENEVOLENT, EQUAL TO THE APOSTLES

St. Mary Magdalene told Caesar Tiberius that Christ died as a man on the Cross, but was resurrected as a God-man after three days. The unbelieving Tiberius, when he heard Magdalene's story, laughed and said: "It is impossible for a man who died and was buried to resurrect himself." At that moment, a slave girl carrying a basket of eggs happened to pass by, and the emperor said to Magdalena ironically: "if these white eggs turn red, then I believe that the Christ who is speaking to me has really risen."

St. Mary Magdalene approaches the slave girl with the basket of eggs, takes one egg and as soon as she touches the others, praying to Christ, they all turn red. Then she boldly takes a red egg and says to Tiberius: "Christ is risen!"

This miracle of Saint Mary is the cause of the Orthodox Tradition of red eggs for Easter.

But dear to Christ, it is a very big mistake, a blasphemy and an unforgivable sin for those who do not repent but remain in sinful thinking and say unimaginable things like those read in the infamous book "The Da Vinci Code" by author Dan Broën, which was made into a movie directed by Ron Howard.

This book is a heretical book and among many devilish lies and deceptions, it dares to say that Mary Magdalene had an intimate relationship with the Lord Christ and tries to argue these with hidden facts or secrets, which are the whims of a depraved and demonized mind and come from apocryphal (secret) Templar or Masonic sources. The Templars themselves were crusaders with the blessing of the pope, to liberate the holy land.

After Christian warriors conquered Jerusalem during the First Crusade, groups of pilgrims from all over Western Europe began to visit the Holy Land. Around 1118, a French knight named Hugues de Payens founded a military order dedicated to the protection of these pilgrims, calling it the Knights Templar. In 1129 the Knights received formal approval from the Catholic Church, and new recruits and generous donations began pouring in from all over Europe. Known for their strict code of conduct and signature style of dress, the Templars founded new chapters throughout Western Europe. They developed a reputation as fierce warriors during the Crusades and established a banking network, earning huge financial income.

For this reason they were cursed by Pope Clement V and the Catholic Church on March 10, 1314, and their leaders and books were burned at the stake and castles and temples were destroyed. In the 18th century, certain organizations, especially the Freemasons, revived some of the medieval symbols and traditions of the Knights Templar.

But again, the antichristian writer Broën took these diabolical fictions and brought them to the surface as we said in the book "The Davinci Code" and for this antichristian work he was anathematized, cursed by the Catholic Church but also by every Christian Church, even more so by our Orthodox Church.

The cause of this heresy in this book and film is Davinci's painting "The Last Supper" where the apostle John is presented as a woman. Davinci, one of the humanist renaissance figures in the West, is known to have had heretical thoughts of the pagan Hellenic culture and was influenced by the heresy of the Templars.

It is a painting according to the desire of the author and not a canonical icon that should be revered, as are those of the "Mystical Supper" in the Orthodox Church. Therefore, it is very important to preserve the canons of the church, because the devil takes advantage of every human error, intentionally or unintentionally.

What is worth mentioning is that the author dares to impudently accuse Christ of sinful relationships as a common man, neither Caiaphas and Anna dared to do this, nor the enemy Jews, who condemned Christ to death on the cross not as a sinner without morals, but only as a blasphemer because he had made himself God. Here is what the gospel tells us about this: "Which of you accuses me of sin?" (Jn. 8:46) And the Jews answer him: "We do not stone you for a good deed, but for blasphemy because you, although you are a man, make yourself God" (Jn. 11:33)

But why does this "modern" antichrist author dare to present the Lord Christ to us with passions, even more so with secret and sinful relationships?

The answer is that the generation we are in has been warned by the infallible mouth of the Lord Christ himself as; "faithful and immoral" generation.

That this generation due to violence, fornication in perversion is similar to the generation of Noah and Sodom as the Lord tells us in the Gospel: "And as it happened in the day of Noah, so it will be in the day of the Son of man... and the flood came and destroyed them all (Lk. 17:26-27) and so it happened in the time of Lot... but on the day when Lot left Sodom, fire and brimstone rained from the sky and destroyed them all, so it will be on that day when the Son of Man comes" (Lk. 17:28-30)

So this generation seeks to justify violence and especially the sin of fornication to the point of perversion, the figure of the Holy One of God Christ as God and perfect man blinds them and accuses them as the gospel tells us "and this is the judgment, that the light came into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light, that their deeds were evil because whoever does evil hates the light and does not come to the light so that his deeds are not revealed" (Jn. 3:19-20)

This is the reason that these people muddy and disfigure the figure of the Lord Christ and want to create for us a "god" of theirs that justifies sinful and perverted passions just as the ancient Greeks did who deified Zeus, a sinful man who had killed his own father, and made him and many other immoral and perverted persons deities in order to justify their sins and "quiet" the conscience.

SAINT MARY MAGDALENA, BENEVOLENT, EQUAL TO THE APOSTLES

But the very life they led and continue to lead is an accusation that they are not only not true but are deceived deceivers and are under the curse and wrath of God. This is what the apostle Paul tells you to the nations: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven, against all unbelief and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness because what can be known about God has become visible in them because God has revealed it to them... because although they knew God they did not glorify or thank him as God but instead became foolish in their reasonings and their heart without judgment was darkened declaring themselves wise made take...

Therefore God gave them over to shameful passions because their women also turned the natural relationship into that which is against nature and in the same way the men leaving the natural relationship with the woman were inflamed in their lusts for one another committing immoral acts male with male, taking upon themselves the due recompense for their intercourse and since they did not properly call it to know God God gave them over to a perverted mind to do unseemly things being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, wickedness, full of pride, murder, strife, deceit, wickedness, gossips, slanderers, enemies of God, abusive, proud, boasters, devisers of mischief, disobedient to parents, unfaithful, without natural love, discordant, merciless.Although they have recognized the righteous decree of God, according to which those who do such things deserve death, they not only do them but also approve of those who do them" (Rom. 1: 18-32).

Therefore remove your eyes, ears and hands from such abominable things so that you do not become polluted and the Grace of baptism does not depart and you end up like all those who do not believe in Christ as God Man, but in the antichrist spirit and wait for his coming as man-god, so that they will perish together with him, as we are told in Thessalonians: "The coming of that wicked one will be according to the work of Satan, with every mighty work, signs and false wonders, with every false miracle deception of unrighteousness, for those who perish because they did not accept the love of the truth to be saved, and therefore God will send them an act of temptation to believe the lie, so that all those who did not believe the truth, but loved unrighteousness, will be judged" (II Sel. 2:8-12)

Unfortunately, there are those so-called Christians, who have not read a page of the Gospel, but have read the dirty and demonic book "The Da Vinci Code" with pleasure, infecting the minds of the people with blasphemous thoughts.

The Church in its canons forbids reading and keeping such books. Canon 63 says: “As for the false compilation of the lives of the martyrs and saints that are written to dishonor the martyrs and bring disbelief, they should not be read, but burned in the fire. Those who know and accept these works must be anathematized" (cursed) canon 63 of the 6th Ecumenical Synod.

Those who have committed this sin must confess it, so that the evil one does not have rights over them and before they appear before the righteous and fearful judge of the Lord Jesus Christ in his second coming, where thoughtless sinners will give an account for every useless word they have uttered.

Beloved in Christ, through the intercession of benevolent women, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Mary of Cleopas, St. Joanna, St. Martha, St. Mary, the sisters of Lazarus, St. Saloma daughter of Joseph, St. Susanna, may the Lord Jesus Christ, the cellular grace, have mercy on us and anoint us with the Grace of the Holy Spirit for the glory of God the Father, Amen.

For many years with the Grace of God resting among the saints. amen

Catechist Miron ?ako