Mary Magdalene – Pray for Us

Am terribly saddened to hear news just in from the Bishop of California that two of the icons of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco have been destroyed.

One was of John Donne and this one was of Mary Magdalene.
Mary Mag

I saw her every day when I spend three weeks living at Grace Cathedral last year. She always seemed to me to be particulary striking, serene and somehow unsettling. She was a bearer of the divine, in other words.

There are images which some people cannot bear. This proved to be one one such.

Mary Magdalene and John Donne – pray with us for a world free from violence, free from attack, free from fears within and fears without.

Amen.

Mary Magdelene – more

I don’t often link to sermons that are preached outside St Mary’s, but couldn’t resist linking to this sermon from the Very Rev June Osborne which was preached last week on the Feast of St Mary Magdalene. It is a great sermon dealing with some of the Mary Magdelene issues that we were thinking about here last week and also reflecting on the nature of the Episcopate in the Church of England at the moment. In the sermon, the apostolate of Mary M is interwoven with the apostolate of the new bishops of Stepney and Salisbury who were being consecrated at the service. And it is funny too.

Don’t forget, never forget, that the Church of England asks its bishops to be a focus of unity and in Scotland we don’t.