Peter of Celle: Sermon 60, On the Feast of the Holy Mary Magdalene #I

Introduction

Peter (also known as Peter Cellensis) was born of noble parentage in Champagne, France, in the first half of the 12th century.  He was educated at the Monastery of St. Martin-des-Champs in Paris before he became a Benedictine.  In 1150, he was named abbot of the Abbey of La Celle, near Troyes.  He was later made abbot of the Abbey of St. Rémy at Rheims, in 1162, and in 1181, he became Bishop of Chartres, succeeding John of Salisbury.  He died a few years later, on February 20, 1183.  Peter wrote many epistles and sermons, as well as a few treatises, including On Conscience, On the Discipline of the Cloister, and an explanation of the Mosaic tabernacle.

This is the first in a series of 5 sermons on Mary Magdalene.  The source is PL 202:822A-825C.

Sermon 60: On the Feast of the Holy Mary Magdalene #I

Peter of Celle (d. 1183)

    From His prepared dwelling, as from royal seats, unto the lower parts of our earth, the merciful and mercy-hearted Lord, having assumed the cloud of flesh, humiliated Himself, according to the time of His predestination, and attended to the rules[1] of our public affairs and every solicitude, as the creator and interpreter of the laws.  Therefore, while, with His senators, He inquired of the merits and causes of each, not in the manner of a judge, but with the piety of a teacher (for He came to instruct the unknowing, not to judge the innocent), a woman who had offended against the laws and had violated the rules of nature came forward, asking not for the censure of a judge, but for the indulgence of a father.

            Accordingly, having thought of remedies, as much for her sake as for other reasons, He, by His benignity, mitigated the bitterness of the law and, having consulted the newly-created senate of the Gospel, He sanctioned the general law of remission, although, by the law of the two tablets, written, indeed, or, rather, stone-carved, by the finger of God, its transgressors were to be punished without pity, and sins were not to be effaced without the shedding of blood.  Therefore, by His meekness and prudence, our legal expert, having received power from the Father over the ancient law, removed some things which were unbearable or impossible, mitigated some cruelties, arranged some things which were less apt, changed some things temporarily, so that He would make the time of the Lord more clear, more tranquil, more judicious, and more honest than that of the servant, and so that, in the coming of the Lord, those who were oppressed by the yoke of grave servitude would be relieved.

            Perhaps He wanted a certain Simon the leper[2] to rail against that pious dispensation of the Lord, holding to the old law and not knowing the new, murmuring in this way, with a leprous mouth, asking, “If this one is a prophet, he would know the prophet Moses, he would know the law too, he would, doubtless, know this woman too (Lk 7:39); if he knew well, he would assent to the law rather than to the prostitute; he would not, with only such a propitious face, incline towards receiving her; rather, armed with the law, he would condemn her to be buried by stones; for he would thus preserve the justice of the law, and he would erect a work of justice.  Therefore, acting contrarily, what justice, what sanctity, what prophecy is there in this?  Is not this woman who touches his feet a known and famous sinner in the city (Lk 7:37)?[3]  Is not the one touched by her defiled?  Certainly, she would not enter my house unless I believed she would be spit upon and condemned by him.”

            When he daily hissed this, with silent mouth, into the ears of the Lord Sabaoth, by a proposal of a similar problem in His law, He proposed a sufficiently argumentative statement, and He proved the servant worthless by his own mouth.  His glorying, then, being cut down by the law of deeds, rather, by the law of faith, He turned a face desirable to all nations (Hag 2:8) towards the sorrowful and afflicted sinner and immediately subjoined a sentence of impunity: Your faith, He said, makes you saved; go in peace (Lk 7:50).  Truly, as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so the ways of the Lord are separated from the thoughts of the leper (Is 55:9); the leper spits upon the leprous woman, but the Lord receives her; more suitably, the leprous woman is cast out by the leper, therefore, she is better received by the Lord.  The leper leprously heaps leprosy upon his own leprosy, since he adds stimulating envy to his pride, but now no trace[4] of leprosy appears in the woman, since, prostrating herself at the Lord’s footprints, she receives the remedy of grace.

            Simon, you judge according to the old law, rather, according to the old man; Jesus does not judge anyone, but absolves the penitent soul.

            You await the law in stones, where is the ministration of death; Jesus, in spiritual gifts, where the virtue of mercy is set on top; for His mercies are above all of His works (Ps 145:9).  Rather, rejoice in the healer of the contrition of the wretched, since you, too, need a doctor, if you want to be healed of the disease of pride; this woman, even if she is not clean from sin, is yet immune from the greatest offense of despair or presumption; she seeks a cure; she does not beg for forgiveness lazily or in passing; she pleads persistently, she clamors forcefully, she weeps abundantly, she does everything, in the presence of well-known and proud householders, humbly as well as patiently.

            Why, therefore, do you want to purge the merit of conversion as well as block up the font of piety?  If, stuffed full of malice, you condemn our yelps, why do you restrain the wild ass drinking in its thirst (Ps 104:11)?  Yet is the one you reproachfully rebuke wavering or needing drink?  What is it, Simon?  In whatever way you judge another, you condemn yourself (Mt 7:2).  For if forgiveness is denied to the penitent, the ceremonial and sacrificial rites in your law are seen to be unnecessary.  You yourself, why are you circumcised?  Why do you give your firstfruits and tithes to the Lord?  Why do you give offerings for sins and offenses, if you prohibit mercy, if you deny forgiveness?  But perhaps you say: “My law condemns fornicators and adulterers, and, ignoring the smallest offenses, it imputes and prunes away the heavier offenses, without respect for mercy.” O Pharisee, if such is your law, that it does not do, or cannot do, in greater matters what it does in lesser ones, therefore, it is either insufficient or unjust.  But it is not, since the law is indeed holy, and the mandate is holy and just and good.  For just and good is God Who gives the law; just and meek is Moses, who brings the law; doubtless, both only erect the just and the holy in law.

            It remains, therefore, that it be insufficient, which is too true; for the law did not lead to perfection (Heb 7:19), nor did Moses, but Jesus led the sons of Israel into the land flowing with milk and honey; for it had its course in time until John; for the law was until John (Lk 16:16); and rightly until John, which means “grace”;[5] for the law—as you, Simon, assert—is without grace; therefore, coming in the flesh, Jesus follows John, Jesus, which does not mean “grace,” but Who is truly full of grace, rather, full grace.  Truly, John runs in between the law and Christ, as the dawn both ends the shadow of night and, heralding, opens up to the light of the sun.

            Therefore, Mary Magdalene, fearing the law without grace, approaches the font of grace, and, lest she be heaped with stones, clings to the feet; Simon, you stretch toward Mary stones of cruelty, Jesus, feet of piety; you strive to act according to the law, but, within, stones are smashed together, or, rather, spin about in your head; for behind Mary, who stands at the feet of grace, the law resides, nor does it extend its arm of condemnation to where she decides to approach the feet of the Savior; it imposes silence upon itself when it hears His word, sees the backparts of the Lord, and does not dare to burst forth in His face; for it was enough for Moses to see the backparts of the Lord (Ex 33:23).  Therefore, take your spot, Simon, with Moses, behind the Lord’s back, since no disciple is above his teacher (Mt 10:24), and suffer the Lord to do His work, receiving Mary the sinner, since to condemn the penitent is a work alien to Him.

            O Simon, you are made blind by the next light, you fall dead at the resurrection, you die at a good scent, you vanish at fullness; but drive such malice out of your heart, lying from your mouth, envy from your eyes, and see your banquet-mate filling His belly not with the food of the table, but with the humility and faith of Mary.  What He is wont to do among the saints, see it fulfilled in your eyes; in the recesses of your house, a living, holy, and God-pleasing victim is immolated, by a new method of offering, at an altar consecrated from incorrupt earth; blood is poured into the basin; oil is scattered, incense is offered, a goat’s throat is slit for the sin of ignorance, and your soul grows angry at this.

            Without a doubt, when Mary renounces libidinous impulses, she slays a goat; when she prays for pardon, she kindles incense; when she pours forth devotion, she pours out oil; when she is ashamed of her deeds, she pours forth blood; when she dies to sin, she offers the victim.  Behold the altar, behold the victim, behold the fire, behold the wood, behold the water, behold the Baptist.  In the holy place, such things are wont to be done, and they ought to be, but where is a holier place than where the feet of Jesus stood?  Adore, says the Psalmist, the stool of His feet, since it is holy (Ps 99:5).  On this stool, Mary lay her head, and, with a most holy weeping, she wet it; for, standing behind the feet of Jesus, Mary began to water it with tears and to wipe it with her hair; Mary waters the plants born of the garden of Mary; Mary—that is, God’s begetter—planted these plants with her flesh and blood, moreover, Mary—that is, the great sinner—germinated what was planted in this way: she watered them with the font from her inner bowels; clearly, another, too, watered them, not with water, but with the oil of grace, when Mary, in her womb—or, rather, the Father from heaven in Mary—planted Him Whom Mary Magdalene watered with water and anointed with oil while He reclined in the house of Simon.

            Good is Mary Magdalene’s watering or anointing, since it erased the stains of sins; better is anointing, or the watering of the Holy Spirit, since it made the one naturally sterile and fruitless many-fold rich in heavenly virtues and gifts in Christ Jesus; greater is that one, humbler is this one; for what that one did in the oil of grace, this one does in the water of penitence.  Mary Magdalene does not water the banqueting Jesus with water, but, rather, the Holy Spirit irrigates with grace the One born of the virgin; read the Scripture of Moses, and understand the sacrament of this watering: the Spirit, it says, of the Lord was borne above the waters (Gen 1:2).  What does “the Spirit of the Lord borne above the waters” mean except that, in the Spirit of God, a soul is cleansed by a greater and better expiation than by water?  What, again, does that “the Spirit of the Lord was borne above the waters” mean, except that the soul is cleansed by the Spirit, the body in water, or, that the Spirit, by watering or overshadowing, could make a nature be conceived without fault?  Truly, in Mary Magdalene’s watering, fault without nature merits to be erased, because the Spirit of the Lord is borne above the waters.

            Mary conceived our nature in Jesus through the Spirit; it was borne above the waters without sin; Mary Magdalene received her soul, shadowed by the abyss of prior offenses, purged of the demon by Jesus and the Spirit cooperating with Him; thus, the Spirit was rightly borne above the waters, since grace descended more copiously into the mother, pardon more lavishly into the sinner, and now, too, the Spirit is borne above the waters of this sinner, when, by the sprinkling of spiritual grace, her soul is cleansed in the effusion of tears and penitence.  Above the waters the Spirit of the Lord is borne when, more by the devotion of hearts than by the sterile moistening of the brain, God is reconciled to sinners; the Spirit purifies without water, or in water; water without spirit, which is borne above the waters, since it is not of the waters of paradise, but of the stagnant pools of Egypt, is false moisture emerging from the eyes, simply for charming men, not for erasing the filth of crimes.  Behold, the goat, changed, is moved by water and spirit, it approaches the altar, when, having rejected the vices of her prior life, Mary Magdalene, changed by conversion of the heart, embraces the feet of piety.

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[1] In this passage, two different Latin words for “law” are used: jus and lex.  To keep them distinct, I am translating the former as “rule” and the latter as “law.”

[2] Throughout this sermon, Peter conflates two stories, one involving a sinful woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee (Lk 7:36-50), the other an anointing in the house of Simon the leper (Mt 26:6-13; Mk 14:3-9).  Peter’s Simon is a leper here and a Pharisee later.  None of these stories specifically state that the woman is Mary Magdalene, though tradition identifies her so.

[3] There are actually two ways to understand this “sinner in the city” phrase: one is that she is simply a sinner who lives in the city; the second is that she is a “city-sinner,” a public harlot, a “street-walker.”  Pierre de Bérulle distinguishes these two meanings in the “Observations on the Text of Saint Luke in Favor of Magdalene” §III, appended to his Elevation Regarding Mary Magdalene.  Since, in the Gospel text, Simon simply refers to her as “a sinner” (Lk 7:39) and not “a sinner in the city,” Bérulle argues that the phrase “in the city” at the beginning of the passage is simply a note informing us “that, at that time, that lady was in the town in which Jesus preached, a circumstance which a historian has a duty to note.”

[4] There is a pun in this sentence: the Latin vestigium originally means “footprint,” but it can also mean a “trace” or “sign” in a more general sense.  Thus Mary Magdalene has no “trace of leprosy” (vestigium leprae) because she has thrown herself down at “the Lord’s footprints” (vestigiis Domini).

[5] The Hebrew name Yohanan means “The LORD is gracious.”

 

Translation ©2023 Brandon P. Otto.  Licensed via CC BY-NC.  Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long as credit is given to the translator.