10: Devotion of Being with Mary Magdalene
The House of New Bethany
Mystical France in the center of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Devotion of Being with St. Mary Magdalene is a refulgent expression accentuating the hyperdulia of true devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It emerges and shimmers out of the Immaculate Heart of Mary heralding the glory of the Sacred Heart of Jesus through Mary.
Devotion of Being with Mary Magdalene is an alethic region in Our Lady’s kingdom, a gift of silent Being in the world from the Virgin Mary, Mediatrix of all Grace. Through a prayerful, sacramental life of interpreting and receiving the gift of Magdalene’s silent Being in the world, we fulfill our slavery to the Virgin Mary for the glory of Jesus Christ. We bring the Father’s Kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven” as Mystical France through Magdalene’s contrite, repentant contemplation in Provence.
Receiving one's relationship with Mary Magdalene for the renaissance of Catholic France and the glory of Jesus and Mary requires the renunciation of the world in imitation of Magdalene’s penitential life of contemplation in the grotto at la Sainte-Baume. Mary Magdalene’s silent Being in Provence is the primordial ground of Catholic and Royal France.
The Holy Spirit’s gift of Being with Mary Magdalene is alethic. Its mode is a refulgence of grace, emerging from our living in the world of Catholic faith. Alethic emergence presents itself as unconcealment in our world through time and interpretation. Devotion of Being with Mary Magdalene is a brilliant, alethic herald for the kingdom of God through time and interpretation and is no less vital to our Being in Mystical France than the traditional metaphysics of correspondence confirming our faith.
Devotion of Being with Mary Magdalene is silent Being, and we must embrace it as the Holy Spirit gives it through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Our Lady opens the region of Mystical France to us in her heart through the glimmering gestalt of Mary Magdalene on the shores of Provence. We receive it without objectification and interpret it through a gathering within the guardrails of holy mother Church’s teachings. Through Magdalene, we live in the silent Being of Mystical France in the center of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Devotion of Being with Mary Magdalene is silent Being under Our Lady’s mantle because:
Its fruits are the love of God and increasing devotion to the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, our baptismal vows, the sacraments, daily Mass, first Friday and first Saturday reparation, poverty of spirit, contrition, repentance, and renunciation of the world for Christ.
It opens the soul to the gift of silent Being in imitation of Christ.
It is inceptual and alethic, imitating Magdalene at the feet of Jesus, who could sense the resplendent glory of the Son of God shimmering through his humanity.
Prayer to St. Mary Magdalene
St. Mary Magdalene, I submit to you as my apostle, my teacher, and the one chosen to form my sanctity through Mystical France. I do this as a reflection of my slavery to the Virgin Mary and under her mantle.
I ask that you intercede for me as my sister, mentor, and founder of the royal line of the House of New Bethany. I ask that the gleaming aurora of the combined hearts of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux permanently seal itself around my heart for the glory of God and the Virgin Mary.
Dear Magdalene, teach me repentance and contrition through the proper life of prayer, penitence, fasting, and the corporal and spiritual acts of mercy. Keep me close to the sacraments and adoration of our beloved Jesus in the Eucharist.
Amen.
The Rule of the Combined Hearts of St. Joan and St. Thérèse
“All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea doth not overflow; unto the place from where the rivers come, they return to flow again.” Ecclesiastes 1:7 (Douay-Rheims).
The combined hearts of St. Joan and St. Thérèse are rivers of grace by which the Holy Spirit fills our hearts. The rivers are circumscribed by the syntax of Magdalene’s inceptual, alethic intellect.
The rivers of grace flow and return in a perpetual hermeneutic. Grace draws us and returns us, only to draw us further toward the horizon of Mystical France. It is an ebb and flow following Magdalene’s inceptual light.
The rule of the combined hearts is this: the gentle ebb and flow along Magdalene’s lighted pathway through the pure dark night of grace as slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
The mode of the combined hearts is this: perpetual receiving and giving, mystically ascending Magdalene’s sacred massif like St. John of the Cross’ ascent of Mount Carmel. The interior of the grotto in our hearts is the Interior Castle of St. Teresa of Avila.
The French Catholic Diaspora
To bring out what hides in us.
“For there is nothing hid, which shall not be made manifest: neither was it made secret, but that it may come abroad.” Mark 4:22 (Douay-Rheims).
The French Catholic Diaspora emerges as silent Being in our hearts on our journey with St. Joan and St. Thérèse to Mystical France, our life’s vocation.
Through docility and perspicacity, we bring forth what lies hidden in us. We enshrine our hearts in the shimmering hues of the combined hearts of St. Joan and St. Thérèse, allowing their hearts to seal themselves around ours.
The Alabaster Light
Magdalene’s alabaster jar represents the refulgence of Aletheia, an unconcealment. Our Lady opens the alethic region of her heart to us as the light of the Holy Spirit reflected through Magdalene’s inceptual silent Being. This light forms the boundaries of our path with the combined hearts of St. Joan and St. Thérèse through the pure night of faith which does not objectify. It draws us as already Being in it. Mystical France is the world we discover and which demands our interpretation; it is not an idea. The lamp posts of Magdalene's inceptual light guide us through the night of faith with Joan and Thérèse towards the kingdom on the horizon.
We are renewed in Magdalene’s love, repentance, contrition, and alethic wonder at Our Lord’s feet in Bethany, at the foot of the cross, and at the tomb of the resurrection.
Magdalene’s alethic charism is “alabaster light,” the refulgence emerging from “choosing the best part.”
The alabaster light emerges from abandonment to the divine will.
Devotion of Being with Mary Magdalene is Our Lady’s holy desire for our hiddenness, hiddenness in the silence behind the alethic refulgence of Magdalene’s alabaster jar.
The essence of this light is hiddenness. Until his public ministry, Our Lord remained hidden. Humility hid Our Lady. Magdalene hid in a grotto. Until entering the public stage, Joan remained hidden in Domrémy and her sanctity remained hidden to the world for a quarter of a century after her execution. At Lisieux's Carmel, Thérèse remained hidden behind its walls.
The alabaster light of Mystical France is hiddenness in God.
Bethany: a place of friendship and rest for Jesus
Bethany: a place where Jesus can retire from the world with unconditional love, free from the chatter of this world. This is what Our Lord intended for France, through Magdalene’s inceptual light, to be a new house of Bethany as the Eldest Daughter of the Church.
First, one must be dedicated to one’s country, then to France and its sacred traditions through St. Mary Magdalene, St. Joan of Arc, and St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
Grounded in the sacraments, true devotion, and slavery to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The Divine Glance
The divine glance. It is an unreflective certainty, an experience of being that cannot be objectified. Its pursuit is endless; it finds only what remains hidden.
Where have you hidden, Beloved, and left me moaning?
You fled like the stag after wounding me;
I went out calling you, but you were gone.
~ The opening to the Spiritual Canticle of St. John of the Cross
In my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and found him not. I will rise, and will go about the city: in the streets and the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and I found him not. The watchmen who keep the city, found me: Have you seen him, whom my soul loveth? When I had a little passed by them, I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him: and I will not let him go, till I bring him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her that bore me. I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes and the harts of the fields, that you stir not up, nor awake my beloved, till she please.
~ Canticle of Canticles 3: 1-5.
This is devotion of Being with St. Mary Magdalene.
