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.
[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.
