Mary Magdalene and Hurt Feelings!

What do you do when people you love ignore your hurt feelings? This is an age old question.  In this painting by Luca Signorelli, Mary Magdalene is depicted as a very rich person holding an alabaster jar. Her face tells onlookers her feelings have been hurt.

Recently, a man I love very much hurt my feelings, told me I had no reason to feel hurt, and then when I attempted to explain why I felt the way I did, he hung on me.  Hanging up on me, was too much. I felt like he had slammed a door on me and excluded me from his inner sanctum.  I want to be intimately emotional with this man and I could clearly see our coping skills were out of sync. So being a modern gal, I went searching for answers via Google.

I found an interesting source: When He Ignores Your Hurt Feelings, Hangs Up on You or Storms Out of the Room

Thank you http://www.peacefulsinglegirl.wordpress.com Your suggestions were quite helpful. You pointed out that men are wired differently than women and need time to process their thoughts and feelings. They need space and time to think things through.

Thinking back on Mary Magdalene’s sad face, I recall what I wrote about the Magdalene’s feelings in my thesis. There I wrote.

Franco Zeffirelli’s 1973 Jesus of Nazareth not only portrays Mary Magdalene as a forgiven prostitute, it also portrays her as Luke’s sinner forgiven for her great love as the woman who anoints Jesus (Tatum 140). The movie ends with Mary Magdalene going to the disciples who are in hiding. They dismiss her testimony as fantasy. According to the American biblical scholar Jane Schaberg, the angered Magdalene “growls, ‘Was his death a fantasy?…Why should he not appear to me? [Then coldly] He told me to tell you, and I have done so.’ She flings back the door, and slams out.” Peter’s disbelief turns to belief and, according to Schaberg, the “Magdalene’s message about an empty tomb” disappears because Peter takes her message and reduces the significance of the resurrection to forgiveness (Mary Magdalene Understood 65).

I’m starting to understand something, I hadn’t previously considered. People need time and space to forgive. What Mary Magdalene did was very wrong.  She let people gossip and think she was a prostitute to protect Jesus the Teacher and his beloved Lady and their community from learning the Truth about her.  And then when the truth finally comes out and people learn that he and she spent the night together, people are going to slam the door on her when she goes and tells.  They like the man dealing with his thoughts and feelings, feel disrespected and the more she tries to explain, they feel she’s yelling. She should lower her voice and be more discrete and let them figure things out for themselves.