Did Mary of Magdala, who is celebrated by the Church on July 22nd, sell her body as a prostitute before she sold her soul to the devil?
We don’t have a lot of details about the life of Saint Mary Magdalene. We do know from the Gospels that she was exorcised by seven demons by our Lord.1 We know that her name—Mary of Magdala—probably means that she came from a town in Israel now called Migdal, which is located on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. We know that she was the first public witness to the Resurrection.2 Over the centuries, many Christians have also assumed that she was the sinful woman who wiped Jesus’s feet with her hair, the woman whose mere presence scandalized the Pharisees with whom Jesus was eating dinner.
Although we don’t have Scriptural certainty that Mary Magdalene was that sinful woman at the dinner party described in Luke 7:36-50, we can make some reasonable assumptions about her character. For example, it’s hard to believe that she was a pious Jewish girl, a wife, a wealthy matron, or even just an upstanding member of the community. Otherwise, the Gospel writers would surely have told us so. It would have been much easier to explain the Resurrection of Jesus to other Jews if the first witness was a respectable woman.
That’s why many Catholics have assumed that Mary Magdalene was indeed that sinful, unnamed woman, that is, a woman who had sexual relations with men for pay. Despite Hollywood’s best efforts to convince us otherwise, our basic human nature inherently knows that such behavior is wrong. A child may grow up wanting to be a firefighter or a doctor or a teacher, but no child wants to grow up selling his or her body to others.
That’s what makes the recent movie Sound of Freedom so powerful. Although the makers of that movie were careful to omit graphic scenes, they included plenty of vivid images designed to make viewers think more deeply about the reality of sex trafficking. There is a particularly poignant scene of a scared little girl, the young heroine of the film, as she sits on a bed in a dreary hotel. The drunken man who enters the hotel room to abuse her never even notices the profound sadness in her eyes, but we, the audience, cannot avoid seeing it.
The producers of Sound of Freedom focused their story on one particularly vile aspect of the world trade in human beings: child sex trafficking in countries located not too far from our own. But human trafficking affects people of all ages, all over the world. Every man, woman, and child forced into prostitution surely experiences the same sadness shown by that little girl, pain that no quantity of illegal drugs can take away. This film gives a voice to all of these trafficked people and their trauma.
But the Catholic Church has recognized the tragedy of sex trafficking from the start.
During the early centuries of the Church, Roman authorities mocked consecrated virginity by forcing Christian women into brothels. It is unlikely that all of them escaped rape by a miracle, as did Saint Agatha of Sicily. Some Christians were brave enough to speak against the mistreatment of consecrated virgins, as did Saint Aedesius, who confronted an Egyptian judge in the fourth century. The judge was unmoved by his argument for compassion and justice, and Aedesius died a martyr.
Over the centuries, Catholics have established homes for women and girls who have been forced into lives of prostitution, along with those who might be easy prey for such a choice because they were orphans, unmarried mothers, or living in poverty. The famous Saint Faustina Kowalska, for example, was a religious sister at a home for “troubled” young women;3 obviously, the troubles these young women faced in the 1930s were not cell phone addiction and eating disorders. Homes like these provided vulnerable women with a place to live and food to eat, but they also taught them skills so they could earn an honest living.
How many women have turned to Jesus Christ and found the strength they needed to leave such a life? Only God knows. But some of these women have become saints.
Saint Afra was a former prostitute who had not yet been baptized when the Roman empire renewed its persecution of Christians in the year 304. She refused to give up her faith and died a martyr in Augsburg, Germany.
In the fifth century, a Catholic priest discovered a woman who was living in the Palestinian desert. The woman, whose name was Mary, eventually told him her life story. She explained that she had been born in Egypt but that she had run away from home as a rebellious teenager. She had spent years living as a singer and a prostitute (which were virtually the same thing at the time) in the great city of Alexandria. At one point, she decided to travel to the Holy Land, perhaps for pious reasons or perhaps for the sake of a change in her clientele. While trying to enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, she received a moment of grace, recognized the depths of her sins, and repented. According to tradition, the Blessed Mother appeared to Mary and pointed her toward the desert. Mary obediently spent the rest of her life there, doing penance for her sins. She has been known ever since as Saint Mary of Egypt.
As the Second Vatican Council reminds us, “Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity.”4 Our bodies are not something that we carry around like coats or caps; they are part of who we are. That’s why it’s simply wrong for a man to try to buy or sell a woman to use for his personal pleasure.5 That’s also why it has been easy for Catholics to imagine that the woman who was exorcised of seven demons needed to be exorcised of bodily sins as well.
Only God knows what sins Mary of Magdala committed which led to her to be possessed by demons. But whatever those sins were, our Lord paid the price to redeem her, just as He did for the rest of us. When we think of the tragedy of children and adults being bought and sold in the next country or in the next room, we can remember the price that He paid. And we can look for ways to lead even one of God’s children to freedom.
• If this problem seems too overwhelming for you to make a difference, see what these secular and Catholic organizations are doing to address the problem of human trafficking.
- Anti-Trafficking International
- Just Ask Prevention
- National Center on Sexual Exploitation
- Sisters of Mary World Villages for Children
Endnotes:
1 See Mark 16:9 and Luke 8:2.
2 Many people have written about this confusion over Mary’s identity; see, for example, my article about “The Real Saint Mary Magdalene”.
3 Other women who devoted their lives to care for women and girls in such situations include: Saint Maria Micaela of the Blessed Sacrament Desmaisieres; Saint Mary of Saint Euphrasia Pelletier; Blessed Anna Maria Adorni Botti; Blessed Maria Karlowska; and Blessed Mercedes de Jesus Molina.
4 See Gaudium et Spes 14 § 1, as quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 382.
5 This is obviously also true for all permutations of men, women, and children.
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Beautiful article; may we pray and work towards an end to this scourge of trafficking.
I saw the Sound of Freedom movie; go see it if you haven’t yet.
Mary Magdalene was understood: not only as seductress, penitent, or feminist icon, but also as weeper of holy tears, witness, preacher, contemplative, reader, and patron (Diane Apostolos-Cappadona).
The mystery of Mary Magdalene continues as Deavel gives account. From other sources, bizarre stories as the mistress of Christ, to the prosperous row boat without oars and floating to Southern France. The Pharisees Sadducees who invited Christ to dinner in Lk knew her as a sinner. The Apostles as one whom Christ dispelled seven demons. One doesn’t require to be sinful to be possessed. However, there’s every indication in Luke’s Gospel that she was a sinner, repentant, overwhelmed with the prevenient knowledge of God’s tender goodness revealed in Christ. Probably a courtesan able to afford costly perfume. She indicates her deliverance from demonic influence by shedding tears on his feet [they were reclining in the Greek fashion] wiping them with her tresses, continuously kissing his feet. Adoration as only a woman would, reserved solely for the divinity. Jesus: Much is forgiven for one who loves much.
Correction: Not prosperous, rather preposterous.
In the Chosen why is she called Lilith? Is this Jewish folklore?
Sex trafficking—and then there’s the even broader problem embedded in the interchangeable focus-group/synods which—in the fondling hands of some clerics—will dismiss the root causes of the explosive LGBTQ demographic, and simply bless the symptoms (gay “marriages”) and even accommodate/validate the so-called lifestyle itself.
Causes? Anti-binaries do not reproduce physically, and genome research points to no causal gene, but instead to other sociological causes for the complex pandemic…absentee and abusive fathers, early and damnable sexual abuse, a porn culture and getting locked-in by early and random sexual experimentation, etc. It’s almost as if the old-fashion First, Fourth, Sixth and Ninth Commandments are supposed to mean something human.
Humanae Vitae even warned that spousal anti-conception (the mechanical or chemical wedge between sexual intimacy and fecundity) was only the beginning….We are now forced back into an Apostolic Age and a real Dark Age. And, there are those in high places who appeal to the early-Protestant notion that formal Church teaching is mostly a backward and expendable custom. That stable Church doctrine and ambulatory theology are interchangeable—almost analogous to the fluidity of gender theory and transgenderism.
For those who still begin each day with a backward morning offering, what might happen if a brief petition to God Almighty were added on behalf of all those child-victims of unspeakable sex trafficking?
Beautiful article, the movie The Sound of Freedom was outstanding however I was shocked to hear Tim Ballard being interviewed by Dennis Prager and then Dennis Prager told him that he accepted legalized prostitution and encourages it, he then asked Tim Ballard if he was against legalized prostitution Tim Ballard said no. I lost a lot of respect for Tim ballad with that comment
I have not seen the movie and I do not think I will because the subject matter is just too awful to contemplate. I am also finding myself becoming increasingly cynical. I just do not trust anything to do with celebrity. A part of me thinks the constant reiterating of certain words and ideologies is part of a softening up process, similar to what we have been through before.
I have some reservations about the combination of celebrity and undercover rescue operations. There are a number of groups who care for trafficking victims without fanfare. But bringing the issue in a dramatic way to the public’s attention is a good thing.
That seems a strange thing for a devout Mormon to say. I have a dear LDS friend and I can’t imagine them saying something like that.
This article’s insinuation connecting St. Mary Magdalene with prostitution and sex and child trafficking perpetuates what is now a debunked mistake by Pope Gregory I that has smeared her rightful reputation for over a millennium. We properly remember and know St. Mary Magdalene using the simple mnemonic device “3Ws:” (not)whore; (not)wife; but (correctly)witness. She’s not the “whore” that she’s been wrongfully identified through a confused reading and conflation of different scripture passages in a homily by Pope Gregory I in 591 which unfortunately is still held and promoted by some today. She’s not the “wife” of Jesus misleadingly popularized in popular culture like by Dan Brown recently. Mary Magdalene is correctly remembered as “witness” or even “prime witness” being the brave “Apostle to the Apostles” as the first to break the good news of the Lord’s resurrection to the cowardly apostles. In Apostolorum Apostola (2016) Pope Francis (through the Congregation (now, Dicastery) on Worship and Sacraments) elevated the Saint’s liturgical celebration from a Memorial to a Feast.
To the question at the very beginning of this article: “Did Mary of Magdala, who is celebrated by the Church on July 22nd, sell her body as a prostitute before she sold her soul to the devil?”, I respond with all the Bible, all of the Church’s Tradition and all the Saints that all sin is prostitution of one way or another. We are betraying the Holy Spiritual Marriage that God wants with all of us, his Holy Bride. As the Prophets themselves often said it when calling Israel to repentance, even though obviously not everybody in Israel was being a prostitute or engaging directly in sexual sins. As an example: constant, willful lying (not sexual) foments an environment conducive to sexuals sins as much as sexual sins creates an environment conducive to constant, willful lying.
Our spiritual being and physical being are one. Playing sinful games with either side corrupts the other or helps us create a sexually perverted environment as grotesquely as we see it today. Whether she was an ex-prostitute or not, Jesus purified her so much and so completely that Tradition says she was the Most Pure Virgin Mary’s close friend for life. In this age of maximum sexual perversion it is a great idea to ask for the intercession of the Most Pure Virgin Mary, the Most Chaste Saint Joseph, Saint Mary Magdalene, Saint Peter Damian and Saint Pope Leo IX, all champions of Jesus against the now glorified sins of the flesh that open wide doors to all other sins and Hell.
Very great comment. Heaven is on your lips.
May it all be for the greatest glory of God and the blessing of his People and of all humanity. Thank you for your deeply kind and generous words. While never seeking recognition or applause, I, like all humans, ocassionally need that confirming refreshment in the middle of the spiritual battle of knowing that we are in God’s loving arms and faithful in his Path. May God bless you and all you love in the mightiest and sweetest of ways!!