Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary

Mary and Mary positioned as the Pieta, with a distraught Mary Magdalene holding a bereft Mother Mary. Mary Magdalene holds Mary because, according to the Gospel of John, it is she (Mary Magdalene) who carries the resurrection story forward: sees the empty tomb and the resurrected Jesus, and, following his instructions, goes to tell the disciples of the ineffable miracle. Arguably, Mary Magdalene is the final link in communicating the foundational miracle of Christianity. With such a lofty task attributed to her, it always struck me as strange that she is largely remembered as the penitent whore; woman redeeming herself in the eyes of God by forsaking her earthly dirtiness.

This painting came from a question in my mind about never having seen a painting with Mary and Mary Magdalene at the cross in mourning. Surely they would have been there. Surely they would have been supporting each other and crying together. In this painting, they are surrounded by the prayer votives of people who have sacrificed themselves in the hope of changing humanity for the better as well as those who have been oppressed and had violence enacted upon them by forces beyond their control. A wild passiflora incarnata vine—so named because Spanish missionaries found the flowers to be symbolic of Christ’s passion—scrambles up the fence behind the two women, a jumper fence referencing the lethal protections that surround our houses of power. Jesus, at the core of His character, was a rebel—a never-ending wellspring of love and justice who stood up to malevolent power and paid the ultimate price. The irony of this is not lost in our current political climate, where White Christian Nationalism is gaining stronger and stronger footholds by the day as our government gets closer and closer to all-out fascism under the current administration.