Mary Magdalene's First Encounter with The Master

Jesus is standing on a rock and is speaking to a large crowd. It is a mountainous place. A lonely hill between two valleys. The top of the hill is shaped like a yoke, or rather like a camel's hump, so that a few yards from the top there is a natural amphitheatre where voices resound clearly as in a well-built concert hall.

The hill is all in flower. It must be summer. The crops down in the plain are beginning to ripen and are getting ready to be cut. The glacier of a high mountain in the north is shining in the sun.

Directly below, to the east, the Sea of Galilee looks like a mirror broken into numberless fragments, each of which is a sapphire lit up by the sun. Its blue-gold twinkling is dazzling and it reflects a few fluffy clouds in a very clear sky and the shadow of some swift sails.

Beyond the lake of Gennesaret there is a vast extent of plain ground, which, because of a light mist near the earth, caused perhaps by evaporation of dew--in fact it must be early morning as the grass on the mountain still has a few dewy diamonds glittering on its stems--looks like a continuation of the lake with an opal-like hue veined with green.

Further back there is a chain of mountains, the side of which is so bizarre as to give the impression of clouds sketched on the clear sky.

Some of the people are sitting on the grass, some on large stones, some are standing.

The apostolic college is not complete. There is Peter and Andrew, John and James, and one can hear the other two being called Nathanael and Philip.

The sermon has already started. I understand that it is the Sermon of the Mount. But the Beatitudes have already been proclaimed. I would say that the sermon is drawing towards the close because Jesus says: "Do that and you will receive a great reward. Because the Father Who is in Heaven is merciful to good people and He knows how to give you one hundredfold to one. So I say to you..."

Suddenly there is much excitement among the people who crowd round the path leading to the plateau. The people closest to Jesus turn their heads round. Everybody's attention is distracted.

Jesus stops speaking and turns His eyes in the same direction as the others. He is serious and handsome in His dark blue tunic, His arms folded on His chest, while the first rays of the sun rising above the eastern peak of the hill shine on His head.

"Make room, you plebeians," shouts the angry voice of a man. Make room for the beauty who is passing!"

Four dandies, smartly dressed, come forward, one of whom is certainly Roman, because he is wearing a Roman toga. They are carrying Mary of Magdala triumphantly on their hands crossed to form a seat.

And she smiles with her beautiful mouth, throwing back her head and her golden hair, which is all plaits and curls held by precious hairpins and pale gold-leaf strewn with pearls which encircles the upper part of her forehead like a diadem, and from which small light curls hang down to veil her splendid eyes, made larger and more seductive by a refined make-up. The diadem disappears behind her ears, under the mass of plaits at the back of her snow-white completely bare neck. And her nakedness extends much farther than her neck. Her shoulders are bare down to her shoulder-blades and her breast even more so. Her dress, held on her shoulders by two little gold chains, is completely sleeveless. Her body is covered, so to say, by a veil the only purpose of which seems to be to protect her skin from sunburn. The dress is of a very light fabric, so that when she throws herself back, out of affection against one or the other of her lovers, she seems to be doing so completely nude. I am under the impression that the Roman is the one she prefers because she glances and smiles at him more frequently and rests her head on his shoulder.

"The desire of the goddess has been satisfied," says the Roman. "Rome has acted as a mount for the new Venus. Over there, there is the Apollo you wanted to see. Seduce Him, therefore! But leave some crumbs of your charm also to us."

Mary laughs and with an agile provocative movement, she jumps to the ground, showing her small feet shod in white sandals with golden buckles, as well as a good length of her leg. Her dress now covers her whole body. It is in fact a very wide one of snow-white wool as thin as a veil, held tight at the waist very low, near her sides, by a large belt made of supple gold bosses.

And she stands on the green tableland, where there is a vast amount of lilies of the valley and wild narcissi, like a flower of flesh, an impure flower, which has opened there by witchcraft. She is more beautiful than ever. Her tiny purple lips seem a carnation opening on the whiteness of her perfect set of teeth. Her face and body would satisfy the most exacting painter or sculptor both because of her complexion and her figure. With her broad breast, her perfectly sized sides, her naturally supple slender waist, as compared with her sides and breast, she does look like a goddess, as the Roman said, a goddess sculptured in a light pinkish marble on the sides of which a fabric is draped and then hangs in the front in a mass of folds. Everything has been devised to please.

Jesus stares at her. And she defiantly resists His look while she smiles and twists lightly as the Roman tickles her, running on her bare shoulders and breast a lily picked among the grass. Mary, with affected indignation, lifts her veil, saying: "Have respect for my innocence!" which causes the four to burst into a guffaw.

Jesus continues staring at her. As soon as the noise of the laughter fades away, Jesus resumes speaking, as if the apparition of the woman had kindled the flame of the sermon, which was losing intensity in its conclusion.

He no longer looks at her. He looks instead at His audience who seem embarrassed and scandalised at the event.

Jesus says: "I told you to be faithful to the Law, to be humble and merciful, to love not only your brothers by the flesh, but also those who are brothers because they were born, like you, of man. I told you that forgiveness is better than hostility, that compassion is better than stubbornness.

"But now I tell you that you must not condemn unless you are free from the fault you wish to condemn. Do not behave like the Scribes and Pharisees who are severe with everybody except themselves, who call impure what is exterior, and can only contaminate what is exterior, and then they receive impurity in the very depths of their hearts.

"God does not stay with the impure. Because impurity corrupts what is the property of God, souls, and in particular, the souls of children who are angels spread over the earth. Woe to those who tear off their wings with the cruelty of devilish beasts and throw those flowers of Heaven into the mire, by letting them taste the flavour of material things! Woe... It would be better if they died struck by thunderbolts rather than commit such sin.

"Woe to you, rich and fast living people! Because it is amongst you that the greatest impurity thrives. And idleness and money are its bed and pillow! You are now sated. The food of concupiscence reaches your throats and chokes you. But you will be hungry. And your hunger will be terrible, insatiable and unappeasable for ever and ever.

"You are now rich. How much good you could do with your wealth! Instead you do so much harm both to yourselves and to other people. But you will experience a dreadful poverty on a day that will have no end.

"You now laugh. You think you are triumphing. But your tears will fill the ponds of Gehenna. And they will never cease.

"Where does adultery nestle? Where does the corruption of young girls hide? Who has two or three licentious beds, in addition to his own matrimonial one, on which he squanders his money and wastes the strength of a healthy body given to him by God that he may work for his family and not to wear himself out through filthy unions which place him below unclean beasts?

"You heard that it was said: You shall not commit adultery. But I tell you that he who looks at a woman lustfully that she who wished to go with a man has already committed adultery in his or her heart. Simply by that.

"There is no reason which can justify fornication. None. Neither the abandonment nor the repudiation of a husband. Nor pity for the repudiated woman.

"You have one soul only. When it is joined to another soul by a pact of faithfulness, it must not lie. Otherwise the beautiful body for which you sin will go with you, O impure souls, into the inexhausted fire. Mutilate your body rather than kill it for ever by damning it. Come to your moral senses, O rich men, verminous sinks of vice, so that you may not disgust Heaven."

Mary, who at the beginning listened with a face which was a dream of allurement and irony, sneering now and again, at the end of the sermon becomes livid with rage. She realises that although Jesus does not look at her, He is speaking to her. She becomes more and more livid and rebellious and at last can resist no longer. She spitefully envelops herself in her veil and, followed by the glances of the crowds jeering at her and by Jesus' voice which pursues her, she runs down the slope of the mountain, leaving strips of her dress on the thistles and dog-rose bushes growing on the edges of the path, laughing out of anger and mockery...(contd)