Discovering Fire for a Second Time

A gospel, as ancient and authentic as any of the gospels that the traditional New Testament contains, was buried deep in the Egyptian desert after an edict was sent out in the 4th century to have all copies of it destroyed. Fortunately, some rebel monks were wise enough to refuse—and thanks to their disobedience and spiritual bravery, we have several manuscripts of the only gospel that was written in the name of a woman: The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

What did her gospel contain that was unique to all the other gospels? What secret teachings does it reveal? Why did it threaten the Christianity that was forming under Emperor Constantine in the 4th century? What was so powerful about Mary’s gospel that it needed to be destroyed? What other gospels were destroyed? And what does the existence of these gospels suggest about the Christianity that was practiced before it was recast as the Empire’s religion?

I am going to lead us through the answers to these questions. And with exuberant nerd joy, I will walk us through the history of the earliest Christians and the radical version of a spiritual practice called kenosis, or “self-emptying love,” that they devoted their lives to experiencing.

But here’s what I want most to happen for you by the last meeting of this session of the ​House of Mary Magdalene​ on the 1st of June.

What led me to all I will share with you wasn’t ultimately found in Mary’s gospel, or in any spiritual text at all. My story with Mary Magdalene begins and ends in my own heart.

There’s this great big unsayable love inside me, and this is what has not only guided me but compelled me to keep searching until what was within me was finally acknowledged outside of me in Mary’s teachings.

The Gospel of Thomas, an early Christian text also not included in the codification process of the New Testament that began in the 4th century, states that “If you bring forth what is within you what is within you will save you.”

And the Gospel of Philip, which was also ordered to be destroyed along with the gospels of Thomas and Mary, says that “Love refuses nothing, and takes nothing; it is the highest and vastest freedom. All exists through love.”

Mary Magdalene says at the beginning of her gospel, “I will teach you about what is hidden from you.”

There is nothing more urgent or essential for us to remember in this lifetime, in this body, than the love that sits here within us, hidden from us, buried right here in our own broken, vulnerable, and wildly human hearts.

Love, we will find together, is the treasure that Christ refers to in Mary’s gospel. It’s what is within us that will save us if we can dare to bring it forth – it refuses nothing, takes nothing, it is the highest and vastest freedom. Everything exists in it. It is the greatest spiritual truth that has been hidden from us from within us. It is the treasure we spend most of our lives trying to find outside of us when what it takes is a courageous act of going inward.

The great 20th century French theologian and Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “Someday after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for god the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.”

We have explored outer space, walked the moon, seen the surface of Mars. We have delved into the depths of the ocean, witnessing creatures that even our most outlandish dreams couldn’t conjure. Ultimately Mary Magdalene’s gospel is about the heights and the depths we can only discover by turning our “sight” inward and meeting with what we have always contained.

It’s about finding the love, that’s like fire itself, that has the power to bring us back to life, each one of us. And once this love is found, it changes the way we see everyone and everything.

Once this love is found we remember the truth of who we really are.

I will be leading us through a meditation at the end of each meeting. It’s a very simple process of learning how to drop into the heart and listen deeply. It’s about learning how to “see” with the spiritual eye of the heart.

For those of you terrified at the idea of meditating, or concerned because you’ve never tried it, it only takes three breaths. You don’t need to have any experience to practice this meditation. I started practicing this meditation almost 20 years ago after encountering Mary Magdalene’s gospel at divinity school and discovering that meditation has always been a part of the Christian tradition. It just remained within the monastic world, so only the ordained practiced the contemplative side of Christianity.

It is, however, the single most important spiritual practice. To learn how to return again and again to the truth of who we are. To allow ourselves to feel in the midst of the worst of what life brings us, that great big unsayable love that is right here with us, from within us, come what may.

I call it the Soul-Voice meditation.

Because this is what I have become increasingly aware of, or awake to, by returning again and again to the heart. The presence of the soul.

And what I want more than anything for you is to feel the reality of the soul while here in this human body. All your power returns to you then. All that you are and all that you’ve come here to do becomes radiantly clear. No one outside of you can mislead you, or derail you from the clarity of what you know. You cannot be manipulated or silenced about your own suffering or someone else’s.

You have remembered the soul you are while here in this human body. You have realized the great big unsayable love you get to be in this lifetime. And this is the process Mary reveals to us in her gospel that Christ gave to her.

How to remember the infinite love that sits here in our human heart like a hidden treasure. And how to live our brief lives in union with it.

With only more love,
M.