The Hooker With Hope - From Brennan Manning

Mary Magdalene stands as a witness par excellence to the ragamuffin gospel.

On Good Friday she watched as the man she loved got blown away in the most brutal and dehumanizing fashion. The focus of her attention, however, was not on suffering, but the suffering Christ "who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).

Never allow these words to be interpreted as allegory in the life of Magdalene.




The love of Jesus was a burning and divine reality to her: she would have been buried in history as some unknown hooker save for the Christ encounter.

She had no understanding of God, church, religion prayer, or ministry, except in terms of the Sacred Man who loved her and delivered Himself up for her.

The unique place that Magdalene occupies in the history  of discipleship owes not to her mysterious love for Jesus but to the miraculous transformation that His love wrought in her life.

She simply let herself be loved. The central truth for which Mary's life has come to stand is that is possible to be delivered through love from the lowest depths to the shining heights where God dwells.

   -- From The Ragamuffin Gospel, 
             by Brennan Manning, Chapter 11.