Poor Clares with Traditional Latin Mass

[Yaatee]

Blessings on you, Beatitude, for sharing Mother Stuart's quote. It is such a profoundly beautiful reminder, and your comments on it were very inspiring.

I also would like to mention much recent biblical scholarship that strongly questions the usual hagiography in which Mary Magdalene is characterized as a sexual sinner (often as a prostitute). There is well done work that rejects this characterization as a conflation of several unnamed women's stories with that of Mary Magdalene.  I offer this factoid only as a further support of Beatitude's point about historical tendencies to over-emphasize sexual sins.  It seems to me that the gracious mercy of God does not have a pecking order.

​V good point, Graciela.  Also the historical tendency to over-emphasize sexual sins committed by women.

 

 

[MarysLittleFlower]

​Each one of us is special simply because God never created another person like us. You can't live exactly like St This or St That, and you aren't called to be a carbon copy of them anyway. Your own beauty comes from following and loving God in the way that only you can - He only made one MLF, and it is your offering of your own life that he is looking at. Every soul its beautiful in its own way, because every soul is unique and has a unique relationship with our Creator and Lover.

St Maryam Baouardy wrote, "He does not want plunder in sacrifices; give him all. In heaven the most beautiful trees are those who have most sinned; they have used their miseries like dung around their roots." We can all do this - use our sins and bad choices and the things we regret, the dung in our lives, to help us to grow. God can bring beauty out of bad. Trusting in His ability and eagerness to do that is an act of faith and this too is a sacrifice and an offering. Repenting your past is one thing, but mourning about it often and wishing you had done things differently is not - it shows lack of faith, as it means we believe in our heart of hearts that we are never going to be as lovely as we could have been. But we are made lovely by God's love for us, not by anything we do or don't do, possess or don't possess, for the simple reason that we have nothing that God doesn't already possess. It's not that some people have got lots of treasures to give and other people have got none at all, and Jesus is sitting there like an accountant with a spreadsheet, going, "Hmm, well, So-and-so has offered me X, Y, and Z, but she's not a virgin, so her soul is going to look less shiny than the soul of Such-and-such." This is not how he works. He told the people, "There is more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over ninety-nine who had no need to repent." And we have all needed to repent from something.

Gabriela is right that solid biblical scholarship today does not accept the idea that the woman with the alabaster jar was Mary Magdalene. Personally I value the fact that she's nameless, because it makes it possible for any reader of that scripture to identify with her. I think that's the point - she could so easily have been any one of us. As St Paul wrote, "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." But if you take comfort from the idea that she was Mary Magdalene, then I don't think God or anyone would have a problem with it.

The only thing to be careful about is that you don't accept the personal ideas of saints who grew up in a very different culture and time as somehow being sacred just because they were saints. Certain saints wrote things that would be unhelpful to anyone with a tendency to scruples, because that was the culture and climate in which they lived. Remember that canonisation according to the Church doesn't automatically mean that anything anyone ever said and did was right and holy. So if you read anything that makes you panic that you can't become a nun because you're not a virgin, then possibly your interpretation of what they're saying is off, or they're just not right on this one. I'm certain no community would refuse to accept you just because of that.

​I agree that each saint (and in general each soul) is unique I do believe that there's something beautiful in virginity however - I see what you mean about God making repentant souls beautiful too - like the Saints who were penitents. I sometimes can't relate to even my favourite Saints because they at most ever committed slight venial sins. This is why like examples like St Mary Magdalene, St Margaret of Cortona, Blessed Charles de Foucauld, and others are encouraging for me.. because if this happened with them, maybe me too, though of course I'm different than them too I do personally believe though that the woman with the alabaster jar is St Mary Magdalene because of the way the three women are described in the Scriptures.. Latin Fathers have typically seen them as one woman. (Eastern Fathers saw it differently). http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09761a.htm  I'm not sure which Biblical scholars today say otherwise, but I tend to often just go with the Church Fathers and not Biblical scholarship because sometimes it's too secular for me - not saying about these particular scholars since I don't know who they are. I tend to side with the Latin Fathers in this question because I think it's logical, since St John says Mary of Bethany was the woman who anointed Christ's feet. The above link mentions this.. also it could be that other Gospel writers didn't want to say that it's St Mary Magdalene to protect her reputation, whereas St John was writing his Gospel later. That's just my understanding not to debate this.. I see there are different views but I wanted to explain why I tend to see her this way. The reason it's been significant for me is because even though she sinned, she went on to love Our Lord so greatly and even saw the Resurrection.. it just helps to be encouraged anyways... God bless!