St John Cassian: Mary Magdalen as Contemplative

July 22nd if the memoria of St Mary Magdalen. July 23rd is the memoria of St John Cassian (c. 360-435), though this isn’t celebrated in the General Calendar, and is, I think, restricted largely to Marseille and to some Benedictine monasteries.

Cassian was a monk of Gaul who spent many years in the East conversing with the Desert Fathers, whose wisdom he recorded in his Conferences. The theology of prayer and the spiritual life contained in the Conferences exercised an enormous influence on monastic spirituality in both East and West, not least on St Benedict and, later, St Dominic, who always carried with him a copy of St Matthew’s Gospel and of Cassian’s writings.

By way of honouring both St Mary Magdalen and John Cassian, here’s a passage from the Conferences in which Abba Moses presents Mary Magdalen as a model of contemplative life:

when Martha was performing a service that was certainly a sacred one, since she was ministering to the Lord and His disciples, and Mary being intent only on spiritual instruction was clinging close to the feet of Jesus which she kissed and anointed with the ointment of a good confession, she is shown by the Lord to have chosen the better part, and one which should not be taken away from her....

You see then that the Lord makes the chief good consist in meditation, i.e., in divine contemplation, whence we see that all other virtues should be put in the second place, even though we admit that they are necessary, and useful, and excellent, because they are all performed for the sake of this one thing.

For when the Lord says: “you are careful and troubled about many things, but few things are needful or only one,” He makes the chief good consist not in practical work, however praiseworthy and rich in fruits it may be, but in contemplation of Him, which indeed is simple and “but one”.

He declares that “few things” are needful for perfect bliss, i.e., that contemplation which is first secured by reflecting on a few saints, from the contemplation of whom, he who has made some progress rises and attains by God’s help to that which is termed “one thing,” i.e., the consideration of God alone, so as to get beyond those actions and services of Saints, and feed on the beauty and knowledge of God alone. “Mary” therefore “chose the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

John Cassian: Conferences 1.1.8.