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Christina Rossetti on Mary Magdalene

 


Reading Christina Rossetti widely for next month’s Poets and the Faith paper at St. Peter’s, I rediscover her ‘reading diary’ of 365 daily reflections, published in 1885 in London under the title ‘Time Flies’. Wondering what she has to say in this daily devotional about the coming week, I turn to her entry for July 22, Feast of St. Mary Magdalene, of whom she notes in her terse manner: “The date of her death is unknown.” 

Rossetti writes: “A record of this Saint is a record of love. She ministered to the Lord of her substance, she stood by the Cross, she sat over against the Sepulchre, she sought Christ in the empty grave, and found Him and was found of Him in the contiguous garden.” 

Contiguous here means the touching or adjoining garden, but also especially surely a place of meeting, where one meets another without touching. This is a place where death meets life. The relationship, listed by the poet with such rhythm and concision, is brought into stronger focus in the next sentence: “Yet this is the same Mary Magdalene out of whom aforetime He had cast seven devils.” 

Rossetti’s lifetime knowledge of Scripture is everywhere given voice in ‘Time Flies’, as in all her poetic output. Likewise, her invaluable talent for attending to the story, choosing salient details, making vital connections, and turning them into something deeper. As she continues: “Nevertheless, the golden cord of love we are contemplating did all along continue unbroken in its chief strand: for before she loved Him, He loved her.” Subtly Rossetti introduces the suggestion that we, the reader or listener, are sharing this example and possibility ourselves in a state of contemplation. 

“Thus love it was which brought Christ and that soul together, and bound them together first and last. Or rather, first and not last: for time must end in eternity, and eternity must end which never endeth, before the mutual love of Christ and His saints shall end.” 

Gifted with sensitive insight and language skills, Christina Rossetti here also demonstrates the experienced method of the homilist. She may move from the particular to the general, the here-and-now to the universal, even as she identifies the message of unconditional love, concluding: “To love first is God’s prerogative. But blessed be He Who humbles not His least saint by loving last.” 

[Reflections on Christina Rossetti for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, the 21st of July 2024, in the pew notes at St Peter’s, Eastern Hill, Melbourne.  Written by Philip Harvey. Image: ‘The Pre-Raphaelites and their World’ an illustrated collection of writings by her brother William Michael Rossetti (The Folio Society, 1995) and ‘Time Flies’, by Christina Rossetti (first edition, SPCK, 1885).]

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