St Mary Magdalene as Type of the Jewish Transitions
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Recently we read the beautiful Gospel that shows the parallel healing and resuscitation: the healing of the woman who had had hemorrhaging for 12 years and the resurrection of the 12 year-old girl. I had always heard these Scriptures for many years now, even into these many years that I have been pondering Apocalypse and Salvation History in general, but it had never occurred to me that there would be an incredible spiritual meaning to this text, that is, until now! What, then, if the scene is a proto-expression of the Two Witnesses discourse? May sound crazy, but it is entirely apropos. Come along and see.
The Two Females, the Old and New People’s of God
To begin, obviously, there are two females, one old, one young: the hemorrhaging woman and the 12 year old girl. Well, firstly, God’s People are female, because they receive from God into their inner being truth and grace, just as a woman receives a man into her body. Relatively speaking, though there is only One People of God at any one time, and in particular, the Church is the true People of God now, there is still an alternative beloved People who, in the New Covenant, are separated from Christ but will accept him at the end, the Jews.
Why is one female older than another? Well, the Jews are older spiritually since they entered covenant with God some three ages before the Christ came, who inaugurated the Church. Hence, the hemorrhaging woman is the Jews, and the girl is the developing Church.
A parallel development is also suggested since they both traverse the same period of time, 12 years; that is, at the time that the woman here encounters Jesus, she has been internally bleeding for 12 years, and the girl, at this time, is 12 years old also. 12, of course, is like the fullness, as in 12 Tribes or 12 Apostles. Hence, a certain sense of an epic event that brings fullness would be meant here. We will deal with this momentarily.
Note, too, this is like the parable of the prodigal son, which is about the Jews and the Gentiles according to some Fathers. Which one is the prodigal son? Okay, well, like above, each son represents a People that are born into the Kingdom of God. The Jewish people were born into God's Family first through Abraham so they are older. The Gentiles are not born into God's family until many centuries later with the coming of Jesus, and so are younger. So then obviously, the older son is the Jews and the younger son is the Gentiles. This gives us an added support to interpret the two females of our Gospel scene in question.
The Two Witnesses as Precursor
The first thing that we will assert is that the hemorrhaging woman Scripture that we are looking at is in perfect correlation to the Two Witnesses discourse (for reference, see the associated text linked above).
This can be argued as follows: Firstly, in the Two Witnesses discourse, two great parallel events are occurring:
The Trampling of the literal Holy City by the Gentiles
The Doctrinal Development of the Church, stained with Christian Division.
We will see that the parallel situations of the woman and little girl fulfill these.
Toward that end, we note that in the Two Witnesses discourse, each parallel activity has the same duration, namely, 3 and ½ years. It is expressed in different ways: firstly 42 months, and secondly, 1260 days. These can then symbolize our similarly parallel time of 12 years in the woman and girl Scripture.
Moving on, the murder of the Two Witnesses that occurs right at the close of the 3.5 years will then image the death of the girl, and her resuscitation will correlate to the resurrection of the Two Witnesses. We will leave the comparisons here for now to elaborate further.
The Old and Young Woman
To begin the primary analysis, the first basic gist is that the little girl is the Church who matures for the first great epic of Church history: the doctrinal development in which Christians are separated from the Catholic Church. The second gist is that, at the same time, the Jewish people are separated from the Holy Land, that is, the trampling of the Holy City by the Gentiles. In other words, those who are spiritually in error [separated Christians] are separated from the spiritual holy place [the Catholic Church] just as those who are in physical error [the Jews] are separated from the physical holy place [the Holy Land].
Within the same period of time, the Jews are internally bleeding because they have not found the Messiah and because they are separated from their home, which they regard as supremely salvific. They are in agony. They are like, if we could but touch the truth of God a little, God would heal us. It will give them a glimmer of hope.
This is like St Mary Magdalene at the tomb. The second time Jesus questions her for weeping, she still does not recognize Jesus, but she surmises He is the gardener and issues forth a faint hope in “finding Him”, “Sir, if you know where they have laid Him, then please tell me, and I shall go and anoint Him.” See.
This really matches up to our modern day. The Jews have been restored their Holy Land, and they have a greater glimmer of hope, as if they had but touched the garment of Our Lord. Meaning what? Meaning, already the Jews are seeing a greater light in the Christ and His disciples. For most of church history, the Jews and the Gentiles were enemies—not merely spiritually but many times physically.
After the Holocaust, Christians had a sober awakening about the treatment they had given the Jewish people. So Christians reached out in love, and the Jews began to recognize, through Christ, righteous Gentiles. They still do not recognized the God-Man standing before them as their Lord, but they seem to look upon Him as someone who can help them “find the Messiah.”And in the spark of truth that the Jewish people are embracing, they were, again, reunited to their land.
In another dimension, the separated Christians and religions can fulfill the woman; they are internally bleeding because of their spiritual errors and lack of grace. I suppose we could say that many of them claim to be older than the Catholic Church because they accuse the Catholic Church of novelty and innovation. Many hyper-Protestants believe that they were the first Christians before Constantine, and that then, the evil men as bishops and pope usurped the Church as impostors. Indeed too, the Orthodox actually believe that the Church has always been Orthodox and never believed in paapl infalliblity until “Peter invented it and created the Catholic Church in AD 1054~”
There were many “doctors” down through the centuries who tried to cure the bleeding woman, but to no avail. Marcion was a doctor. Montanus was a doctor. Donatus was a doctor. So were Arius, Nestorius, Muhammed, the Orthodox, Hus, Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Wesley, the Puritans, the Jansenists, Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, Marx, Engel, etc. All these men tried their cures, and the woman only got worse.
But soon, Jesus will heal all these divisions in the Chastisement and reunion of Christians, when Our Lady will Triumph in peace.
Yes, if they would but touch the truth of Jesus and His Church, there could be a healing of the reunion of Christians.
I forgot another thing: why are the garments of Jesus the truth? Well remember that the Church is the Body of Christ, and the primary layer of meaning of the Woman of Apocalypse is that she is the Church. The Virgin is secondary. And the Woman is clothed with the sun. The sun is the greatest light in the sky, and the light symbolizes the truth which guides us. So Jesus’ white garment that he wears is like the sun of the Woman. So if the hemorrhaging woman can simply touch the truth she will be healed.
All of this is while the Church is developing from infancy into the fullness of childhood. When the period of doctrinal development ends, that is, the end of the 12 years, the church is regarded as dead because there is an apostasy. This agrees with the Two Witnesses. Again, two parallel events are happening with the witnesses. In Apocalypse 11, the outer court is being trampled by the Gentiles for 42 months. In the same period, or 1260 days ,the Two Witnesses are attacked spiritually and the results of the attacks come back upon their attackers. This means that when anyone tries to attack, spiritually, the Witness of the Church through Scripture and Tradition, the same spiritual attack comes ricocheting back to harm the person in the very same manner as their attack. For, spiritual error and lack of grace and sin, are their own consequence.
After the Two Witnesses finish their preaching, the Beast rises up and kills them. This is really incredible; it is implying that at the fullness of the first stage of church history: three parallel events occur
First, the Church wraps up the first great age of her doctrinal development
The second is that Jerusalem is no longer trampled by the Gentiles, meaning the Jewish people enmass come back to the Holy Land
Then, finally, apostasy occurs in which the Church seems dead and is rejected and disrespected by the world that celebrates they no longer need to have a conscience.
All this happened in the late 1960s. The Church wrapped up 2000 years of doctrinal development in one of the greatest councils, the second Vatican Council, which did not introduce any new teaching but represented the Church’s great Tradition in a positive light. Here, it is worthy to note that Vatican II was a good council, a great council even. It is that Vatican II was misinterpreted that has created all our troubles, not the council itself and what it really intended.
Vatican II was in the mid-sixties.
At nearly the same time, in 1967, the Jewish people regained control of Jerusalem as a part fo the greater former Holy Land.
And in the late 1960s, the Sexual Revolution inaugurated the minor apostasy in the West, and for a whole generation, the world has laughed at the church and has celebrated that they don't need to care about religion and morals anymore.
So this is like the little girl that is dead. People mock Jesus that He can raise the little girl, but he raises her and is vindicated. Note that, once again, 12 years is the fullness of childhood, the full maturation. The Church will rise to prominence again when Our Lady triumphs, showing the world their need for the Church in the chastisement.
Here is now an addendum, somewhat more speculative, but very plausible.
It is this. In but a little bit, the girl will transition into puberty, which is when she flowers into a woman.
Now, after the chastisement shows the Church to be right and She converts all the non-Catholic Christians to herself, symbolizing, again, the healing of the woman with the hemorrhages, and after the girl is raised from the dead, symbolizing, again, the glorious reawakening of the world to the Church, then the age of Peace will be inaugurated, the age of our Lady. We are told by some prophecies that in the age of peace, there will be the greatest Council of all time, the Great Council. It will interpret many difficult scripture passages. This can be like the puberty of the Church: the Church flourishes into her full vindication, like the assumption of the Witnesses into heaven in Apocalypse 11.
Only one event remains, which is when the young girl is consummated with her husband. That, of course, is the Second Coming, the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, when Jesus will consummate His Marriage to His Bride, the Church.
So it all fits in; for years and years and years I have had the Two Witnesses theology all set; that was so easy, but I never thought to think that this would be the proto-theology.
Finally, all this seems corroborated by the wondrous discourse of Jesus on the destruction of the Temple, where He speaks of the fulfillment of the times of the nations, which can easily fit with our “fullness of time”, 12 years:
Luke 21:
"And they [the Jewish People] shall fall by the edge of the sword [destruction of Jerusalem]; and shall be led away captives into all nations [the great diaspora, AD 70 to AD 1950~]; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles; till the times of the nations be fulfilled [the fullness of the Gentiles, the first “time of the nations”, or sign of the end]."
In conclusion, the Scripture could very well be revealing that the first great phase of maturation for the Church is where the reunion of the physical People of God with their physical place of beatitude is the time when the fullness of the Gentiles shall occur for the Church, that is, the first sign of the end, when nearly all of humanity, having learned an apocalypse lesson, shall enter the Church in full.
Praise the Lord that such an amazing Scripture could contain these profound realities.
God bless you!
I am a Catholic revert. I desire to share deeper theology about the Catholic Church that is admittedly speculative but that makes perfect sense from Catholic doctrine and church teaching.
The Catholic Church shows us that we are all priceless regardless of what anything the world may say about us. We can hold our heads high and know that God loves us no matter what and desires us to be with him forever if we but persevere in love with him unto the end.
To know these things gives me great joy and I am just a poor sinner striving to become holier little by little.
May God bless all writers and readers on this site in all ways, amen!
