Friendship is the linking of spirits. It is a spiritual act, not a social one. It is the finding of the remainder
of the self. It is knowing a person before you meet her. It might be that we not so much find a friend
but that friendship, the deathless search of the soul for itself, finds us. Then the memory of Mary
Magdalene becomes clear, becomes the bellwether of the real relationship.
Mary Magdalene is the woman whom scripture calls by name in a time when women were seldom named
in public documents at all. She is, in fact, named fourteen times—more than any other woman in the
New Testament except Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus. She is clearly very important, and
apparently a wealthy woman. Most of all, she understood who Jesus was long before anyone else did
and she supported him in his wild, free-ranging revolutionary approach to life and state and temple. She
was, it seems, the leader of a group of women who “supported Jesus out of their own resources.” And
she never left his side for the rest of his life.
She was there at the beginning of his ministry. And she was there at the end. She was there when they
were following him in cheering throngs. And she was there when they were taking his entire life,
dashing it against the stones of temple and state, turning on him, jeering at him, shouting for his death,
standing by while soldiers poked and prodded him to ignominy. She tended his grave and shouted his
dying glory and clung to his soul. She knew him and she did not flinch from the knowing.
The Magdalene factor in friendship is the ability to know everything there is to know about a person,
to celebrate their fortunes, to weather their straits, to chance their enemies, to accompany them in
their pain and to be faithful to the end, whatever its glory, whatever its grief. The Magdalene factor is
intimacy, the unshakeable immersion in the life of the other to the point of ecstasy, to the depths of
hell.
The Magdalene factor in friendship is what distinguishes those who walk with us through the shallows of
life from those who take the soundings of our soul and follow us into the depths of them.
–from The Friendship of Women: The Hidden Tradition of the Bible by Joan Chittister
of the self. It is knowing a person before you meet her. It might be that we not so much find a friend
but that friendship, the deathless search of the soul for itself, finds us. Then the memory of Mary
Magdalene becomes clear, becomes the bellwether of the real relationship.
Mary Magdalene is the woman whom scripture calls by name in a time when women were seldom named
in public documents at all. She is, in fact, named fourteen times—more than any other woman in the
New Testament except Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus. She is clearly very important, and
apparently a wealthy woman. Most of all, she understood who Jesus was long before anyone else did
and she supported him in his wild, free-ranging revolutionary approach to life and state and temple. She
was, it seems, the leader of a group of women who “supported Jesus out of their own resources.” And
she never left his side for the rest of his life.
She was there at the beginning of his ministry. And she was there at the end. She was there when they
were following him in cheering throngs. And she was there when they were taking his entire life,
dashing it against the stones of temple and state, turning on him, jeering at him, shouting for his death,
standing by while soldiers poked and prodded him to ignominy. She tended his grave and shouted his
dying glory and clung to his soul. She knew him and she did not flinch from the knowing.
The Magdalene factor in friendship is the ability to know everything there is to know about a person,
to celebrate their fortunes, to weather their straits, to chance their enemies, to accompany them in
their pain and to be faithful to the end, whatever its glory, whatever its grief. The Magdalene factor is
intimacy, the unshakeable immersion in the life of the other to the point of ecstasy, to the depths of
hell.
The Magdalene factor in friendship is what distinguishes those who walk with us through the shallows of
life from those who take the soundings of our soul and follow us into the depths of them.
–from The Friendship of Women: The Hidden Tradition of the Bible by Joan Chittister
THE FRIENDSHIP FACTOR
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