A Reflection Of Trust Series

It wasn’t that Gregory had anything against Mary; he was simply using her for an illustration of how Jesus can change your life. I’m not sure the sermon had the effect Gregory was hoping for because we are told a Magdalene cult spread throughout Europe.

The French were so taken with Mary that they made her French. Around 1260, a Dominican monk published the Golden Legend, which claimed that after Jesus’ death Mary had fled Jerusalem and ended up in southern Gaul. Her spirit, the story said, protected the French, although she must have been on vacation between 1914 and 1945.

Later the Catholic Church apologized and in 1969, declared that, for the first time in 1400 years Mary should not be thought of as the sinful woman of Luke. I guess you’re only infallible while you’re still alive. And then in 1988, Pope John Paul II called Mary Magdalene “apostle to the apostles” in an official church document and noted that in Christians’ “most arduous test of faith and fidelity,” the Crucifixion, “the women proved stronger than the Apostles.”

At different times in history Mary of Magdalene has been identified as Lazarus’s sister, the “sinful” woman mentioned in Luke 7:32 and the woman caught in adultery in John 8 that would be the entire “Cast the first stone” story, but there is no evidence for any of those theories.

Mary came back to the lime light in Dan Brown’s novel that swept to the top of the best sellers list at turn of the century. In the Da Vinci Code Mary has been lifted to a new level for millions of readers and movie goers. If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie the hypostasis is that Mary Magdalene and not Peter was the head apostle, that it was Mary whom Christ had entrusted his church with and Mary who was supposed to lead it. That she was removed from her position by Peter and the other apostles because they resented her leadership and that she had to flee to France in order to save her life. And it is in France that her descendants still live.

The book and movie also tell us that not only was Mary an important disciple of Christ’s but that she was also his wife and was pregnant with his child, a daughter named Sarah when he was crucified. And that is the secret that is hid in the paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci.

The major part of the book’s theory lays in the interpretation of Da Vinci’s painting the Last Supper. We are all familiar with it, if not here is a picture of the painting.

Now the Bible tells us that the Last Supper was attended by Jesus and his 12 apostles. But in the Da Vinci Code we are told that this person here is not actually John but instead is Mary Magdalene.

What do they base that on? First of all it’s based on how girly John looks, but really what does that tell us, look at Phillip, he’s not as pretty but he could be a handsome woman. Artists of that era and Leonardo in particular tended to paint young men in a feminine manner, here is Da Vinci’s painting of John the Baptist. Then the book tells us that everyone knows the V is the feminine sign, I didn’t, but presumably everyone else does. And here we see the V.