Born in Florence on April 2, 1566, Mary Magdalene (baptized Catherine) was taught mental prayer when she was nine years old at the request of her mother. At twelve years old she experienced her first ecstasy while looking at a sunset which left her trembling and speechless. With this foundation in prayer and in mystical experience, it isn't surprising that she wanted to enter a contemplative monastery of the Carmelite Order. She chose the monastery of St. Mary's of the Angels in Florence because the nuns took daily Communion, unusual at the time. In 1583 she had her second mystical experience when the other nuns saw her weeping before the crucifix as she said, "O Love, you are neither known nor loved."

What her experiences and prayer had given her was a familiar, personal relationship with Jesus. Her conversations with Jesus often take on a teasing, bantering tone that shocks those who have a formal, fearful image of God. For example, at the end of her forty days of graces, Jesus offered her a crown of flowers or a crown of thorns. No matter how often she chose the crown of thorns, Jesus kept teasingly pushing the crown of flowers to her. When he accused her, "I called and you didn't care," she answered back, "You didn't call loudly enough" and told him to shout his love.

She learned to regret the insistence on the crown of thorns-- Jesus told her, "I will take away not the grace but the feeling of grace. Though I will seem to leave you I will be closer to you." This was easy for her to accept in the midst of ecstasy but, as she said later, she hadn't experienced it yet. At the age of nineteen she started five years of dryness and desolation in which she was repelled by prayer and tempted by everything. She referred to her heart as a pitch-dark room with only a feeble light shining that only made the darkness deeper. She was so depressed she was found twice close to suicide. All she could do to fight back was to hold onto prayer, penance, and serving others even when it appeared to do no good.

Far from enjoying the attention her mystical experiences brought her, she was embarrassed by it. For all her days, she wanted a hidden life and tried everything she could to achieve it. When God commanded her to go barefoot as part of her penance and she could not walk with shoes, she simply cut the soles out of her shoes so no one would see her as different from the other nuns. If she felt an ecstasy coming on, she would hurry to finish her work and go back to her room. She learned to see the notoriety as part of God's will. When teaching a novice to accept God's will, she told her, "I wanted a hidden life but, see, God wanted something quite different for me."

Mary Magdalene's wisdom and love led to her appointment to many important positions at the convent including mistress of novices. She did not hesitate to be blunt in guiding the women under her care when their spiritual life was at stake. When one of the novices asked permission to pretend to be impatient so the other novices would not respect her so much, Mary Magdalene's answer shook this novice out of this false humility: "What you want to pretend to be, you already are in the eyes of the novices. They don't respect you nearly as much as you like to think."

   
     
     
    In 1604, headaches and paralysis confined her to bed. Her nerves were so sensitive that she could not be touched without agonizing pain. Ever humble, she took the fact that her prayers were not granted as a sure sign that God's will was being done. For three years she suffered, before dying on May 25, 1607 at the age of forty-one.

Innumerable miracles reportedly followed her death. The process for her beatification began in 1610 under Pope Paul V. It was completed under Urban VIII in 1626. She was canonized 62 years after her death by Clement IX on April 28, 1669.

St. Mary Magdalene is often depicted in art as a Carmelite nun with the symbols for the Passion and kneeling before the Holy Trinity. Christ crowns her with thorns, the Virgin gives her roses (Roeder). She is sometimes shown receiving the Blessed Sacrament from Jesus, receiving a white veil from the Virgin Mary, being presented to or receiving a ring from Jesus, crowned with thorns and embracing a cross, with rays falling on her from a monstrance, or with flames issuing from her breast or an arrow piercing her heart.

 

   
Other On-Line Resources:   - The Index of Carmelite Topics on the Web
- The Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi Window at the Boxmeer (Netherlands) Carmelite Monastery

-
IV Centenary of the Death of Maria Magdalena de' Pazzi
-
The Works of St. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi (in Italian)
   

© 2012 CARMELITE MEDIA
CARMELITE VIRTUAL MUSEUM
DARIEN, ILLINOIS
USA