Every year on her feast day, I honor St. Mary Magdalene; even though the Church does not officially recognize her as the patron of whores, she certainly is in the public imagination. And if beliefs have power, that recognition of sacred whoredom in the minds of millions has far more metaphysical and philosophical weight than any official Church designation.
Magdalene’s Day 2019
July 22, 2019 by Maggie McNeill
I once got to ask Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong about Mary Magdalene–who he believes (as I do) was Jesus’s wife. He held forth for a good thirty minutes on the life and times of Mary, including the fact that she was not from Magdalala–a village founded after her death–but that the term came from a Jewish/Aramaic term meaning “the Great.” And so I hold her in my heart, Mary the Great, patron of whores and other lost individuals who have found themselves in a unique and different way.