“There Isn’t One,” She Said. · The MAGDALENE Network

“There Isn’t One,” She Said.

𝘈 𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘦, 𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘧𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘳, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘢𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘦𝘦.

Most of the missions we visited were cared for by Indigenous families who had tended these sacred places their whole lives. You could feel their love for the land, and how excited they were to tell the stories of their people and the waters.

The Santa Barbara Mission was different. More tourist-ready. The woman at the front was tall, blonde and polished, like she'd just come from a corporate lunch with dirty martinis and pinkies out. She knew where everything was. But you could tell she had no real connection to the land, or to the people who belong to it

So when Carrie asked her where we could find the statue of Mary Magdalene, she didn't hesitate.

"There isn't one."

She said it kindly. Firmly. Like someone who had answered that question before and was sure of the answer.

Carrie didn't buy it. She leaned over the counter and lowered her voice, so the woman wouldn't be embarrassed. "She's definitely here. I've seen her. I can feel her. She is here."🌹

The woman held her ground and gave the same answer. Carrie just smiled. "Okay. When I find her, I'll come back with pictures."

So we went looking.

And there she was. *See Photo

Mary Magdalene, kneeling at the feet of the risen Jesus, a jar beside her, her face turned up toward him. Life-size. Carved in stone. In a chapel this woman had probably walked past a thousand times.

We took a photo and brought it back to her. "Oh, that one," she said. "That's one of the Fates. That's not Magdalene." But Carrie was ready for that. She had also photographed the plaque set into the floor, which says plainly that the statue is Magdalene, with a passage from the Gospel of John.

I've thought about that moment every day since.

Because she wasn't lying. She truly didn't see it. Nobody had ever told her to look.

And why would she think it was Magdalene? Most of us never stopped to ask why this woman was at the heart of Jesus' story. Even when the writers painted her as a repentant sinner, she was still right there with him. At his anointing. At his crucifixion. At his resurrection. She was there for all of it, like the beloved companion she was.

We just couldn't see it clearly.

Mary anointed Jesus with expensive nard while the disciples complained.

Mary stayed when the men fled, afraid for their own lives.

Mary stayed at the cross.

She came to the tomb before dawn to tend to his body, a task that fell to the women closest to him.

And when he rose, he appeared to Mary first, and sent her to tell the others what she had seen.

So here's my challenge. Read the story again and ask who is at the center of it with Jesus.

Not Paul. Not Peter. Not Matthew, Mark, Luke or John.

It was Mary. 🌹

And her importance, her relationship with him, her transformation and her spiritual authority were written out.

We see what we're told to see.

Think about Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. For five hundred years, people looked at the figure sitting at Jesus's right hand. Soft face. Long hair. Leaning away from him in that graceful V.

We were told it was John. So that's who we saw.

Then a novel came along and asked a simple question. What if that's a woman?

And suddenly half the world couldn't unsee it.

The painting hadn't changed. Not one brushstroke. What changed was permission. Someone said look, and we looked.

That's how it works with the feminine. She's rarely gone. She's just standing where we were taught not to look.

My grandmother had a wall-sized tapestry of the Last Supper in her dining room. My cousins and I used to joke that we were eating dinner with Jesus. Life-size Jesus. Life-size Mary, though none of us knew it. And not once did anyone say, hey, I think that one next to Jesus is a woman. Not once.

It was written on the floor.

Right in front of that statue, set into the marble, is a plaque.

It's the passage from the Gospel of John, the one every church reads at Easter. Mary of Magdala comes to the tomb while it's still dark. She weeps. She turns around and sees a man she thinks is the gardener. He says her name.

Mary.

And she knows him.

Then he sends her. Go to my brothers and sisters and tell them.

She is the first one to see him risen. She is the first one sent to carry the news. In the earliest centuries, Christian writers gave her a title for that: the apostle to the apostles.

It was carved into the floor. In marble. Right under our feet.

And still, "there isn't one."

The missions are full of women.

Once we started looking, we couldn't stop.

Mother Mary everywhere. Mary Magdalene. Saint Clare. Women in the paintings, in the gardens, in the chapels, with flowers at their feet. Walking through those missions, I kept noticing how few men there were in the art. Jesus, yes. But surrounded by women.

These places were built by Franciscan friars. And that's where my heart started beating faster.

Saint Francis gave up everything to live close to the earth, close to the poor, close to love. Saint Clare left her family's wealth to follow him and founded her own community of women. In the church in Assisi where Francis is buried, there is a whole chapel dedicated to Mary Magdalene, painted in the early 1300s by artists from Giotto's circle.

I've always known in my heart that Francis loved her. Standing in those missions, surrounded by her, I felt like I finally had proof.

And here's the part that gave me chills. In 2016, a pope who took the name Francis raised Mary Magdalene's day to a full feast in the Church calendar, and called her what the early writers called her.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗹𝗲𝘀.

So what are you being told not to see?

I don't think that woman at the mission was hiding anything. I think she was doing what most of us do. Trusting the story she was handed.

We all do it.

About Mary. About women. About ourselves.

We're told who we are, what we're capable of, what's not there. And we stop looking. The truth was right there. No one ever gave us permission to see it.

Mary Magdalene's own gospel talks about this. It says the soul gets held back by powers that tell her who she is. One of them is Ignorance, and the soul gets free when she finally recognizes it for what it is.

That's what happened in that chapel. We didn't find something new. We recognized what had been there the whole time.

So I'll ask you what Carrie asked that woman.

Are you sure it isn't there?

Go look again. 🌹

Every Sunday at 9 AM ET, I read Mary's gospel with anyone who wants to come, free, inside The Magdalene Network. Join us here.

And in April 2027, we'll walk these missions together on our Sacred Waters of the California Coast Missions retreat. More soon.

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“There Isn’t One,” She Said.