MARY MAGDALENE - THE WOMAN WHO OPENS DOORS.
⚠️⛔️🔥 THOSE ALLERGIC TO SPELLING MISTAKES, PLEASE ABSTAIN... I'M WORKING ON IT, BUT I DO WHAT I CAN AND THAT SHOULDN'T STOP ME FROM EXPRESSING MYSELF!!! ⚠️⛔️🔥
📆 April 09, 2023, I open my eyes. It is 7:00 in the morning, I wake up gently in my room in Meudon, and a priori nothing differentiates this day from all the others, except that...
🔔 For the first time in my life, I am aware that Easter celebrates the resurrection of Christ, that my apartment is empty, that I am lying on a floor mat, that a good dozen pilgrims from the roads to Compostela are sleeping on the floor in my living room, that my children are visiting me for the weekend because they now each live with their father, and that in 2 hours I will officially be homeless for some and for others the one who, alongside my sidekick, is setting off in the footsteps of Mary Magdalene to open LA VIA MAGDALENA.
— Claire, wake up, it's time!
🏙️ Massy, Chilly-Mazarin, Morangis… for our first day, we walked 22 kilometers and here there is no pilgrim refuge or donativo like on Compostela, just noise, concrete, planes, speed and the doors of churches and presbyteries closed!
🏞️ Sitting on a bench at the entrance to the Parc Saint-Michel in Morangis, it is now 5:43 p.m. Despite our experience on the roads, our bags are ten times too heavy. We are exhausted, the sun is starting to decline, it is cold and around us, families are heading home. Seeing the mothers with their children, I feel the tears welling up, I wonder at what point I decided, not even being Catholic, to set off in the footsteps of a woman, half saint, half prostitute, whom I don't even know!
🤐 Claire is next to me, silent, I see her fatigue and dejection. Are we so naive as to think that because we are pilgrims the world will rush to open doors for us? I pull myself together and try the last resort phone call. I found a list of numbers for the 7 priests in the area on the internet! They all said NO! There is one missing.
-No, miss, I'm sorry, I'm not at my parish, I'm in the province.
🤳 - Ok, but maybe you have another number… Someone you know? A friend? A shelter… Something! We are Pilgrims, we are going to Jerusalem and it's Easter after all! We're not going to sleep outside!!! You have to find us something… It's not possible otherwise.
- …
Claire and I are hanging on the speakerphone of my phone
- There is maybe…
- Yes, what?
- But it's not certain at all!
- Doesn't matter, tell me anyway!
-The Saint Joseph Catholic school, there is a community of Sisters there!
🌹 Hope returns suddenly! Claire and I run with our bags and our greatest hope a few hundred meters from the park. A huge building and a green door. Claire rings the doorbell, followed by an eternally long silence, will they answer? Yes… No… we hope! I launch a “Mary Magdalene, we're working here so do what you have to do please! I didn't leave my kids for this… ”
- Yes?
- Hello, we are two pilgrims and we are going to Jerusalem on foot, we are very tired and cannot find a place to sleep.
- …
How long time can be when it can be a deliverance.
The door opens, a tall, slender Sister with a wonderful smile welcomes us.
Claire is stunned, her heart full of joy and disbelief, she blurts out “You're opening for us?”
💧 I burst into tears... This open door, this smile seizes me to the depths of my being. Behind these tears is the heaviness of my bag, my doubts ruminated all day, the pain in my body from the first steps, the guilt of having left my children, the questioning of my ability to take on this film project, my total vulnerability!
It's 6 p.m., time for the Sisters' Adoration; we enter this timeless chapel, and they begin singing a song of Mary Magdalene...!
Claire and I look at each other, I burst into tears again...
🤸♂;️ Tonight, we will sleep like queens in the gymnasium of Saint Joseph's primary school and have a wonderful Easter meal, served by Sister Françoise Raphaëlle, Oblate of Saint Francis de Sales!
📚 As she brings us the meal, she arrives with the Pilgrim of the Week and the book "Tell me, Mom, is Compostela Still Far Away?". Again, I can't hold back my tears...!
🚪 After a wonderful night and a hearty breakfast, Sister Françoise Raphaëlle opens the door for us and says... "If you have found lodging in Morangis, with Mary Magdalene, the woman who opens doors, you will find somewhere to sleep everywhere! God bless you!"
It is therefore in Morangis that we realize that our pilgrimage has truly begun!
🧧 The wonderful encounters, the gifts of the camino provides, and the openness to possibility inherent in the life of a pilgrim will then follow one another...
🏘️ In Seine-Port, there will be Blaise, the Cameroonian philosopher who is a bit dark – Does this bother you? his wife asked us on the phone – In Sens, we laugh a lot with the sisters, apostles of the Love of the Missionary Family of Notre-Dame, and passionately discuss Mary Magdalene, the sinner with seven demons or the big boss of the Apostles since she was named Apostle of the apostles in the apocryphal texts of Nag Hammadi and recognized by John Paul II. In Villeblin, Louis will give us the essential oils needed for our pain. In Chaumont, we will spend a festive evening with Anne and Eric, the policeman... There will also be our wonderful meeting in Guerchy with the artist Jean-Louis Espilit and his partner Denis Prince. It is at their place that I will choose my hiking skirt that came straight from Rajasthan and that I will wear every day until today, and I hope until Magdala...
⛪️ After 12 days of incredible encounters and setting out on our path, we finally arrive at the beautiful and long-awaited Basilica of Vezelay! Our first place of contact with Mary Magdalene and her relics. Claire arrives in front of the eternal hill with a joyful heart as if she were seeing an old friend again, but I can't understand why I don't feel anything there.
It is indeed here, in the streets of Vezelay, that we will take our first steps in the footsteps of Mary Magdalene through just incredible encounters!
💃 To begin with, there will be Anne Marie Bonhomme, a former nun, now married, who writes icons that distill the light of Christ that she glimpsed while brushing against death. For her, Mary Magdalene did not wait for Christ to be whole, which struck me! There will also be Frédérique Le Marchand, an incredible artist who paints works inspired by the face of Christ. She is also a specialist in Hebrew letters and reveals to us that in Hebrew, the words saint and prostitute differ by only one letter depending on the pronunciation of the person who sings the language. Frédérique provides an answer to a recurring conversation between Claire and me. The pilgrim is not on the road but in the making. Magical! Claude Matoux reminds us of Mary Magdalene's myrrhophore dimension through the creation of her perfumes and soaps inspired by the plants and scents of the Bible. It is here that I will find the soap of my life! Made of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. In the center, Mary Magdalene, during breakfast, we will meet Joëlle, who accompanied Christianne Singer in writing her book "Last Fragments of a Long Journey", and Christelle Willemez who stages, among other things, her texts... A meeting that already speaks to the rendering of our trip!
For three days, Claire and I are caught up in a divine whirlwind that overwhelms us, where information about Mary Magdalene comes to us from everywhere except the place supposed to contain the relics of the Holy prostitute. Claire meditates and attends the blessing of the pilgrim, but I don't find the meaning there, and I ask Anne Marie to bless me!
After these first fifteen days where our bodies have been made, where the emotional pain of leaving our families fades, where the magic of the road has seized us and where the road begins to become our home... we feel deep within our BEING that MARY MAGDALENE is looking for us, calling us, allowing us to open her way.
🌹 So Mary Magdalene, who are you really?
Céline in search of herself...🌹
Latest Posts
RESIST TO EXIST: THE ART OF NOT LETTING YOURSELF BE EXTINGUISHED. There are silences that kill, absences that confine, acceptances that bury us alive. We live in a world where everything is designed for us before we even have time to ask ourselves the question: Who am I? We are shaped, molded and trained. We are not born free... We must wrest this freedom from the clutches of an established order that only wants us to submit.