Meet our Patron Saints

Obviously setting up this blog and writing about the patron Saints has taken a long time. I have pondered many times on how to present St. Mary Magdalene. I can't seem to get past my own sinfulness in order to present St. Mary properly. Then the answer came the moment I was on my way to confession for the countless number of times, "I do not require perfection, just that you love." Words from Jesus. At that moment I understood myself once again as a sinner in need of forgiveness and at the same time knowing I could not live apart from Him even in my sinfulness.

That is what Women Espousing Purity is all about, not that we are pure but that He is pure. He is asking for our love, how ever it is possible for each one to show that love.

St. Mary Magdalene

From the New Testament, one can conclude that Mary of Magdala (her hometown, a village on the shore of the Sea of Galilee) was a leading figure among those attracted to Jesus. When the men in that company abandoned him at the hour of mortal danger, Mary of Magdala was one of the women who stayed with him, even to the Crucifixion. She was present at the tomb, the first person to whom Jesus appeared after his resurrection and the first to preach the “Good News” of that miracle. These are among the few specific assertions made about Mary Magdalene in the Gospels. From other texts of the early Christian era, it seems that her status as an “apostle,” in the years after Jesus’ death, rivaled even that of Peter. This prominence derived from the intimacy of her relationship with Jesus, which, according to some accounts, had a physical aspect that included kissing. Beginning with the threads of these few statements in the earliest Christian records, dating to the first through third centuries, an elaborate tapestry was woven, leading to a portrait of St. Mary Magdalene in which the most consequential note—that she was a repentant prostitute—is almost certainly untrue. On that false note hangs the dual use to which her legend has been put ever since: discrediting sexuality in general and disempowering women in particular.

St. Mary had the reputation of a bad girl, the black sheep of the family. She died at the age of 72 in the loving care of angels. Her love for Jesus went beyond the fear of the opinion of others. Beyond the threat of death at the foot of the cross. She was the first to meet Him after the resurrection. For me that is huge, not his Mother, not John or Peter but Mary of Magdalene. Ponder that. 

St. Joan of Arc

St. Joan of Arc, by name the Maid of Orléans, French Sainte Jeanne d’Arc or La Pucelle d’Orléans, (born c. 1412, Domrémy, Bar, France—died May 30, 1431, Rouen; canonized May 16, 1920; feast day May 30; French national holiday, second Sunday in May), national heroine of France, a peasant girl who, believing that she was acting under divine guidance, led the French army in a momentous victory at Orléans that repulsed an English attempt to conquer France during the Hundred Years’ War. Captured a year afterward, Joan was burned to death by the English and their French collaborators as a heretic. She became the greatest national heroine of her compatriots, and her achievement was a decisive factor in the later awakening of French national consciousness.

Joan was the daughter of a tenant farmer at Domrémy, on the borders of the duchies of Bar and Lorraine. In her mission of expelling the English and their Burgundian allies from the Valois kingdom of France, she felt herself to be guided by the voices of St. Michael, St. Catherine of Alexandria, and St. Margaret of Antioch. Joan was endowed with remarkable mental and physical courage, as well as a robust common sense, and she possessed many attributes characteristic of the female visionaries who were a noted feature of her time. These qualities included extreme personal piety, a claim to direct communication with the saints, and a consequent reliance upon individual experience of God’s presence beyond the ministrations of the priesthood and the confines of the institutional church.

The words of St. Theresa the Little Flower
strengthen my heart as well.

1 John 4:16 ~ "...... God is Love. Whoever lives in Love lives in God, and God in him."