No one can hurt you now
Because you know what’s true
Yes I believe in me
So you believe in you
It’s funny how rumors get started. Sometimes they are the result of innocent mistakes; sometimes they are the result of nosey speculation; sometimes they are out and out sinister and meant to do harm. Rumors are always the result of us trying to know more than what we have been told. Rumors could in fact be labeled “things we don’t know.” If you have ever had one told about you then you might realize just how damaging they can be and the damage can be almost impossible to repair, even if the rumors are eventually proved to be untrue. The recent death of Michael Jackson has drawn much public attention to the effect that rumors and rumor telling can have on one’s life and career. The more famous a person is, or the more eccentric they are, the more likely we are to believe just about anything someone says about them, especially if the person saying it claims to speak from a position of authority (e.g., a reporter, a religious leader, or a “personal acquaintance”). This isn’t a new phenomenon at all, but is actually as old as humanity. Much has been written in recent years about the Church’s so-called suppression of the Gnostic Gospels (several different collections of sayings or stories attributed to Jesus of Nazareth that were shared by certain communities after his death), but what the early church leaders were trying to do by developing a list of accepted scriptures and creating a creed of basic beliefs, was to limit what was being said about Jesus to those things which they felt they could reasonably assert to be true. In essence, what the early church tried to do was exert a bit of rumor control, albeit in an imperfect and sometimes heavy-handed manner. Humans are curious creatures though, and we love to speculate about things we don’t know and religious leaders have proved to be no exception to this rule.
Sometime in the late 4th century, Pope Gregory I gave a sermon in which he linked two female characters from scripture: Mary Magdalene, and another woman typically described as a “sinner” or an “adulteress.” It didn’t matter that there was no link in the scriptures between these two characters, nor did it matter that the Pope was only presenting this as an opinion of his own and not a tenent of the faith; the die was cast, the rumor had begun, and for over 1400 years Mary Magdalene would be thought of in the Western Church as a prostitute. But even
those that have fought to vindicate Mary from the rumor of being a prostitute, haven’t stopped from spreading equally, if not more spurious, rumors about her themselves: everything from being a wealthy patroness, a priest, or even the romantic consort or wife of Jesus. Mary Magdalene has been the subject of so many recently published books, that among the saints she has achieved pop star status herself, and yet so much of what has been written about her is based purely on speculation or rumor. In our age of mass media, where every aspect of everyone’s life seems to be open to public scrutiny, it can become increasingly hard to reconcile ourselves to the fact that some things we will never know. When people’s private lives are treated like public property, we are prone to forget that some things are indeed none of our business. We aren’t meant to know everything about everyone. I am convinced that life is better that way.
It was remarkable for me to watch the response to Michael Jackson’s death. It seems that for a couple of days people were able to push aside all the rumors about his eccentricities and just focus on that which he truly offered us: his music, his dancing and his creativity. What if we did the same for Mary Magdalene? What if we ignored all the salacious rumors and conspiracy theories and focused only on what she gave to us: the first proclamation of the Resurrection. Wouldn’t it be great if instead of making up stories about other people, we could just focus on how other people have contributed to our own story? How wonderful would it be not to be burdened by all the drama in other’s lives, but to feel truly free to live and experience our own lives? Humans, according to the Judeo-Christian Tradition, are made in the image of God. If God still remains a mystery to us, then it should come as no surprise that humans reflect a bit of that mystery as well.
May we all learn to embrace our own mystery.
Blessings,
Fr. Kevin
