2 products
Mary Magdalene
Regular price $650.00
Much mystery and romance shroud the legend of Mary Magdalene, overshadowing her very significant role as a witness to the central events in the Christian faith. According to some accounts, Mary Magdalene appears as a noble and wealthy Jewish woman from Magdala in Galilee and sister of Martha and Lazarus. She lives a highly extravagant life before converting to the teachings of Jesus Christ, who helps dispel both her vanity and pride. Beautiful and proud she wept at the feet of Jesus, anointing Him with expensive perfume from an alabaster box of ointment, washing his feet with her tears and drying them with her long beautiful hair. Viewed by some as the Apostle’s Apostle, she was the first to witness the Resurrection of Christ, after coming to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ dead body with sweet spices. Under direction from Jesus, she spreads the word to the other apostles. As a deeply faithful disciple, she perseveres, when other male disciples abandon Christ, by leading the group of women who witness the Crucifixion, burial, empty tomb and Resurrection. In addition to witness, she also serves as preacher, healer and contemplative. 14 years after the Crucifixion she arrives by boat to the shores of Gaul, now France, where she evangelizes the region before retiring to a grotto in the St. Baume mountain range, to live a life of solitary contemplation for 30 years.
St. Teresa of Avila
Regular price $195.00A Spanish mystic and one of two women elevated to Doctor of the Church, St. Teresa of Avila (1515-82), as an activist and mystic visionary, illuminates the importance of contemplative practice in becoming one with God for the purpose of actively loving others. The Interior Castle, her sentinel discussion on this journey imagines the soul as a crystal palace with God dwelling in the center and where other rooms serve as the process for self knowledge, discernment, surrender, clarity and eventually love. She emphasizes the importance of contemplative practice as the way to find union with God which fuels service to others, loving others in tangible ways. Prayer cultivates virtue. She is the patron saint of Spain.
We celebrate her grace with an oval image of her ecstatic experience of setting her aflame with divine flame through the hand of an angel.