A Message of Hope (II).

(From Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Byline: Bambi L. Harper

(THIS is the continuation of the interview with Carmen Valdes, an ex-nun, who was featured in this space in the Inquirer's Dec. 28 issue)

Q: Athough the next question has nothing to do with Christmas, I'd like to know your opinion as to why there is such a fuss over the best-seller, "The Da Vinci Code"? It is after all admittedly fiction, so why are so many people taken with its premise that the beloved apostle was really Mary Magdalene whom Jesus married?

A: Why is the "The Da Vinci Code" so intriguing to people? My guess is that the book-aside from its "sexy" issues like intrigue, Jesus having sex with a wife, and secret societies with giants like Leonardo Da Vinci as members-feeds on our desire to find the humanity in the Divine, or to find the divinity in us. As the scripture says, "we are gods," and the truth is, we are, and God is so much a part of us that it blows our minds to think that God is "like" us.

I want to set the record straight: Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute. There are at least four to five "Mary's" in the Gospels, and the Medieval church chose to identify Mary Magdalene with the prostitute. Luke's Gospel, as does Paul's, makes it clear how important women were in the early Church, which role later generations downplayed for obvious reasons.

Mary Magdalene was the only one, besides John, who stood at the foot of the cross with Mary, Jesus' mother. It was to Mary Magdalene that Jesus first appeared (after His resurrection). Many scholars believe that Mary Magdalene is the sister of Lazarus whom Jesus brought back from the dead. What people have a difficult time accepting is that God invented sex and that Jesus, God incarnate, would marry.