A great philosopher has stated that a woman can be classed under two categories:
1. A mother, a mistress and a friend; or,
2. A comrade and queen and child.
A woman is really rooted in physical reality, and all the above six attributes of the philosopher always live in her.
Thus the Song of Solomon produced a passionate commodity, but it required the Mary Magdalene of the Gospel to express the summum bonum of a woman of “Greatly Loving.”
In the first prayer book of A.D. 1549 there was a Collect for her! No other woman had a Collect except the Virgin Mary.
Emotion, self-surrender, selflessness, immortal courage, wondrous physical beauty! Mary Magdalene was a great human reality. It is quite obvious she was no debauchee or her Beauty would have failed, nor could she have been a “hardened” sinner or she would have scoffed!
What was her history? What caused her lapse? Who was her Betrayer?
“Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her.”
And is it not very striking that St. Peter, who dictated St. Mark’s Gospel, records in the 16th chapter, verse 9, of St. Mark, that the first person in the world to whom the Saviour showed Himself after His Resurrection was Mary Magdalene?