St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi
from catholic.org
Feastday: May 25
It would be easy to concentrate on the mystical experiences
God gave this saint, rather than on her life. In fact, it would be difficult to do differently, so overwhelming were those
gifts from God. The
temptation for many modern readers (including the author) would be to see little to identify with in these graces and walk away without seeing more. The other
temptation would be to become so fascinated with these stories that one would neglect to dig deeper and learn the real lessons of her life.
But
Mary Magdalene de Pazzi is not a saint because she received ecstasies and graces from God. Many have received visions, ecstasies, and miracles without becoming holy. She is a saint because of her response to those
gifts -- a lifelong struggle to show love and gratitude to the
God who gave her those graces.
In fact
Mary Magdalene saw her ecstasies as evidence of a great fault in her, not a reward for holiness. She told one fellow sister that
God did not give this sister the same graces "because you don't need them in order to serve him." In her eyes,
God gave these
gifts to those who were too weak to become holy otherwise. That
Mary Magdalene received these
gifts proved, in her mind, how unworthy she was.
Born in
Florence on April 2, 1566,
Mary Magdalene (baptized Catherine) was taught mental
prayer when she was nine years old at the request of her mother. Her introduction at this age to this
form of
prayer which involves half an hour of meditation did not seem to be unusual. And yet today we often believe
children incapable of all but the simplest rote prayers.
At twelve years old she experienced her first
ecstasy while looking at a sunset which left her trembling and speechless.
With this
foundation in
prayer and in mystical experience, it isn't surprising that she wanted to enter a contemplative monastery of the Carmelite Order. She chose the monastery of St. Mary's of the
Angels because the
nuns took daily Communion, unusual at the time.
In 1583 she had her second mystical experience when the other
nuns saw her weeping before the crucifix as she said, "O Love, you are neither known nor loved."
Mary Magdalene's
life is a contradiction of our instinctive thought that joy only comes from avoiding suffering. A month after being refused early religious profession, she was refused she fell deathly ill. Fearing for her
life the
convent had her professed from a stretcher at the altar. After that she experienced forty days of ecstasies that coexisted with her suffering. Joy from the graces
God gave were mixed with agony as her illness grew worse. In one of her experiences
Jesus took her heart and hid it in his own, telling her he "would not return it until it is wholly pure and filled with pure love." She didn't recover from her illness until told to ask for the
intercession of Blessed
Mary Bagnesi over three months later.
What her experiences and
prayer had given her was a familiar, personal
relationship with Jesus. Her conversations with
Jesus often take on a teasing, bantering tone that shocks those who have a formal, fearful image of God. For example, at the end of her forty days of graces,
Jesus offered her a crown of flowers or a crown of thorns. No
matter how often she chose the crown of thorns,
Jesus kept teasingly pushing the crown of flowers to her. When he accused her, "I called and you didn't care," she answered back, "You didn't call loudly enough" and told him to shout his love.
She learned to regret the insistence on the crown of thorns. We might think it is easy to be holy if
God is talking to you every day but few of us could remain on the path with the five year trial that followed her first ecstasies. Before this trial,
Jesus told her, "I
will take away not the
grace but the feeling of grace. Though I
will seem to leave you I
will be closer to you." This was easy for her to accept in the midst of
ecstasy but, as she said later, she hadn't experienced it yet. At the age of nineteen she started five years of dryness and desolation in which she was repelled by
prayer and tempted by everything. She referred to her heart as a pitch-dark room with only a feeble light shining that only made the darkness deeper. She was so depressed she was found twice close to suicide. All she could do to fight back was to hold onto prayer, penance, and serving others even when it appeared to do no good.
Her lifelong devotion to
Pentecost can be easily understood because her trial ended in
ecstasy in 1590. At this
time she could have asked for any
gifts but she wanted two in particular: to look on any neighbor as
good and holy without judgment and to always have God's presence before her.
Far from enjoying the attention her mystical experiences brought her, she was embarrassed by it. For all her days, she wanted a hidden
life and tried everything she could to achieve it. When
God commanded her to go barefoot as part of her
penance and she could not walk with shoes, she simply cut the soles out of her shoes so no one would see her as different from the other nuns. If she felt an
ecstasy coming on, she would hurry to finish her work and go back to her room. She learned to see the notoriety as part of God's will. When teaching a
novice to accept God's will, she told her, "I wanted a hidden
life but, see,
God wanted something quite different for me."
Some still might think it was easy for her to be holy with all the help from God. Yet when she was asked once why she was weeping before the cross, she answered that she had to force herself to do something
right that she didn't want to do. It's true that when a sister criticized her for acting so different, she thanked her, "May
God reward you! You have never spoken truer words!" but she told others it hurt her quite a bit to be
nice to someone who insulted her.
Mary Magdalene was no pale, shrinking flower. Her
wisdom and love led to her appointment to many important positions at the
convent including mistress of novices. She did not hesitate to be blunt in guiding the women under her care when their spiritual
life was at stake. When one of the novices asked permission to pretend to be impatient so the other novices would not respect her so much,
Mary Magdalene's answer shook this
novice out of this false humility: "What you want to pretend to be, you already are in the eyes of the novices. They don't respect you nearly as much as you like to think."
Mary Magdalene's
life offers a great challenge to all those who think that the best
penance comes from
fasting and physical discomfort. Though she fasted and wore old clothes, she chose the most difficult
penance of all by pretending to like the things she didn't like. Not only is this a
penance most of us would shrink from but, by her acting like she enjoyed it, no one knew she was doing this great penance!
In 1604, headaches and paralyzation confined her to bed. Her nerves were so sensitive that she could not be touched without agonizing pain. Ever humble, she took the fact that her
prayers were not granted as a sure sign that God's
will was being done. For three years she suffered, before dying on May 25, 1607 at the age of forty-one.
In her footsteps:
To find out more about the Carmelites visit the following sites:
Carmelite Resources The Carmelites (of the ancient observance) The (Discalced) Carmelite
Home Page Prayer:Saint
Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, pray that we
will make a commitment to seek the presence of
God in
prayer the way you did. Guide us to see the graces
God gives us as
gifts not rewards and to respond with gratitude and humility, not
pride and selfishness.
Amen
