The Exorcist Files - Jesus and Mary Magdalene: Lent Series, Ep 4

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

Father finishes his Lenten Audio Retreat with Jesus and Mary Magdalene!Thank you to Hallow for partnering with us. It's not too late- head to Hallow.com/exfiles and start praying!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome back to The Exorcist Files. And just like Pirates of the Caribbean are Fast and the Furious, yes, we can just keep going because we have more content for you than you probably thought was possible. Father's Lenton Audio Retreat series continues this week with Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Now, as a reminder, it's not too late to sign up for Hallow's Prayer 40 Challenge. The best time to start a dedicated intentional season of prayer time? Probably far earlier than any of us can remember. The second best time? today, right now. God says he rewards those who diligently seek him. So head to hallow.com

slash X-Files. That's X-Files, hallow.com slash X-Files, and click the link in the show notes. Hello, it's the app you're looking for. And with that, as John wrote in his gospel about something far more important and holier than podcasts, it is better for you that I should go. So here's our very own priest with the intellectual feast, Father Martins. Hello friends. Over these past three weeks, we've been on a journey in this Lenton retreat, a journey by which Christ has been teaching us how he saves. In the first week's meditation, we saw that Jesus is not interested in a superficial relationship. He calls us to discipleship, to a real personal bond with him, a bond that demands leaving an old way of life, and embracing a new one with him.

But it is a relationship that is structured hierarchically. We are not Jesus as equals. Jesus is the master and we are the servant disciple. In the second week's meditation, we looked at St. Peter and saw something profoundly unsettling, but deeply consoling. Even a genuine disciple retains his woundedness. is conflicted within himself, and remains an unfinished work in progress long after he has become a

disciple. Nevertheless, God does not discard such a person. On the contrary, he showers such a disciple with mercy and patience, and leads him to the salvation he desires, even as that journey contains unexpected twists and turns. In a word, the Lord shows, using St. Peter, that the work of salvation is a process that he is working out. In a word, salvation is his, Jesus's own work. On the third night, we went even deeper. We saw that Jesus himself fully entered into the same human struggle

in which you and I are engaged. And he did so as a man like you and me, as a human being, one who is also God, but who possesses every natural limitation that humans possess. His humanity was not protected by his divinity. He knew suffering,

that is, fear, anguish, temptation, and most of all, the crushing weight of obese, obedience. But he showed us what the fruit of obedience is, victory. This week we come to our final Lenton meditation. We ask, what does Christ actually do to someone when he transforms that person? In other words, what does the work he does inside us actually look like? To answer that, we turn to to marry Magdalene. On Easter morning, an incredible event happened to Magdalene.

Her lord, the one whom she had seen executed two days prior, appeared to her after rising from the dead. One can only imagine the kind of explosion of surprise and joy such an experience would produce within Magdalene. Yet her response to it is curious and even strange. though she is clearly surprised by the event, her first word is not one of surprise like, oh, neither is it one of emotion and joy, such as, Alleluia. Nor is it one of an exclusively religious nature, such as Lord or My God.

Instead, her response is one that originates in the intellect. she calls the risen Christ teacher. That salutation is not an unusual one for Jesus. Others call him teacher at times. But it seems unusual in this context. So I want us to take a look at what Jesus did to Magdalene to elicit that response from her. Scripture does not tell us much in the way of biography about Magdalene.

She is mentioned among the women who accompanied Christ and ministered to him, Luke Chapter 8, verses 2 to 3. She is named as standing at the foot of the cross, this is mentioned in the crucifixion accounts of all four gospel writers. She saw Jesus Christ laid in the tomb, and she was the first recorded witness of the resurrection. There is one other fact, however, that is very striking. From her, seven demons had gone out. Mark chapter 16, verse 9. This, obviously, is not a small detail.

Magdalene was profoundly bound. She was owned by darkness. Scripture does not describe her symptoms, but we know from other biblical cases and from the church's experience, what demonic bondage does to someone. It draws a person into one long suffocation. The victim lives under constant torment. Thoughts are constantly disturbed.

Emotions swing wildly. The will is attacked. Peace is never obtained. Possession produces a deep fragmentation of, of the self. The person no longer feels whole, but through that dominion experiences profound shame, isolation from others, futility, loss of dignity, a crushing sense of worthlessness. The victim of possession feels watched, controlled, and overwhelmed by forces she cannot resist. This is the world in which Magdalene lived.

Her life had become a mere shadow of what human living was meant to be. I asked the victim from one of my old cases to describe what it's like to be possessed. Here is what was described to me. It's a terrible feeling. It feels like you're awake inside a body that's not yours anymore. You're still there. You can see here and feel, but you're not the one deciding what happens. It's like sitting in the backseat of a car while someone else grips the wheel and is in control. I remember there was a constant pressure inside me, like a weight pushing outward from my chest and head at the same time.

My thoughts no longer felt they belonged to me. when I tried to think it was as if my own mind was being spoken over drowned out by something louder colder and stronger I cannot describe how crowded it felt inside me

there was no silence no private space even my memories felt exposed as though someone else was rummaging through them while I watched the demon said terrible things you're disgusting. I'm going to kill you. You're just an animal to be eaten. You can make all this stop by killing yourself. When he moved my body, I felt it happening but from a distance.

Like my arms and voice were being operated through me rather than by me. Words came out of my mouth that I didn't choose. Sometimes I heard them the same way others did with shock and horror because I knew they were not mine. The worst part was the hatred. It's not just anger. It's a deep, steady hatred of everything good, especially anything holy. When prayer begins, the pressure inside me becomes almost unbearable, like something is being forced into a place where it can't stay. I felt completely cut off from everyone. I did. I did. I did. weird things and had anger outbursts that kept many people away. But even from the people I loved, I felt cut off from them. If I tried to get help from them, the demon would come and I would black out.

I was in one long torture. The Gospels tell us only that Magdalene was possessed by seven demons. In biblical language, the number of the number of people. 7 signifies fullness or completeness. So the gospel is telling us something deeper than a mere number. It is telling us that Magdalene was not mildly troubled. She was completely overwhelmed by darkness. Scripture doesn't tell us how she became possessed. One thing is certain, though, you don't become possessed by making peanut butter sandwiches. There are three ways in which one can become possessed. One, by committing personal sin.

Two, by inheriting the effects of a generational curse. Three, by being the target of a transferred sin. Curses, hexes, spells, etc. While we don't know in what manner Magdalene became possessed, we do know some facts that may provide important. important clues. The first clue concerns wounds and trauma, which always prepare the way for possession. We know Magdalene was from Magdalene. Magdalene was a wealthy but notoriously immoral town, so much so that there is a sentence in the Talmud which declares that Magdalah was

destroyed by the Romans on account of its immorality. In other words, Magdalene likely grow up in a morally chaotic environment. The second clue is the fact that the vast majority of those who become possessed become so through their own personal choices, i.e. their own personal sin. Church tradition associates Magdalene with serious sexual sin. This is not possible to prove biblically, but the association is very ancient. The most likely starting point is that Magdalene lived a life wounded by sin and trauma. We hear about the state of being possessed by seven demons elsewhere in the New Testament.

Matthew quotes Jesus as saying, When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through waterless places seeking rest, but he finds none. Then he says, I will return to my house from which I came. And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and brings with him seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter and dwell there.

And the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. The upshot, of course, is that Satan doesn't like to lose real estate. And should he regain someone that he previously lost, you can bet he's going to invest much more energy to keep that from happening again. The passage informs us that if he is able to obtain the individual again, it is because that person didn't fill himself with what ought to be there, the Holy Spirit. instead he left himself swept clean, that is, void and empty of God, thus making himself subject to possession. Instead, he left himself swept clean, that is, void and empty of God, thus making himself subject to repossession. While the fact that Magdalene had seven demons does not prove that she had been possessed, been delivered, and then became possessed again,

it also does not exclude that possibility. In fact, the specific mention of seven demons in both passages might suggest that that is, in fact, what happened to Magdalene. Regardless, when the gospel tells us that Magdalene had seven demons, it is telling us not simply that she suffered a profound spiritual oppression, but also that her life was fragmented, that her identity, dignity, and interior peace had been deeply shattered. Each of us possesses what might be called a horizontal view.

The horizon is the point where the earth and sky meet. Beyond the horizon lies more reality, but you can't see it, so you don't know what's there. The horizon marks the limit of what I can see, what is visible to me. One's horizontal view consists of our basic understanding and beliefs about reality. Among other things, it encompasses the way we see ourselves, the way we see the world, the way we interpret how to live, the way we understand our place in the world. And it has been formed by our lived experiences.

I guarantee you that in your horizontal view, money, doesn't grow on trees. So if all of a sudden you passed by a tree and you saw money literally growing on it, you would have to reform your horizontal view. Magdalene's horizontal view would have been very different than the average persons. Being possessed by seven demons, she was not just troubled, she was dominated. And this likely included spiritual torment, bodily violation, emotional instability, psychological upheaval, personal shame, and a fractured sense of identity.

This is what reality consisted of for her. It was her horizontal view. But then something profound happened to Magdalene. She encountered Jesus. He did not recoil from her. He didn't avoid her. He didn't treat her as a problem to be solved. he saw her.

And he spoke with authority over the darkness that bound her. When Jesus drove out those seven demons, the experience for Magdalene would not have been merely physical or spiritual. It would have been existential. Imagine what that experience must have been like. After years of interior turmoil, silence, after years of confusion, clarity. After years of suffocation, freedom.

After years of bodily violation, sovereignty. After years of torment, peace. For Magdalene, it would have been like stepping out of a hurricane into stillness. For the first time in years, perhaps in her entire life, she would have felt clarity of mind, stillness, freedom. Following that encounter with Jesus, she would have realized something astonishing. She was loved by God because only God could have set her free from her torments. God reached out to her personally. She therefore understood that she had value to God and was part

of his plan. This part can't be overstated. In Magdalene's day, the Jews rightly looked upon demonic possession, not as a physical problem, but as a spiritual one. Wrongly, however, they believed that possession was evidence of God's disdain for the person. The victim of possession, therefore, not only had to deal with the torment of the possession, and not only with being a societal outcast,

but also with the belief that she was unwanted. even by God. What a terrible state to be in. But then Jesus comes along and with him came a glorious liberation. Magdalene began to understand who she truly was and could feel hope, dignity, and love. To call this a transformation would be almost too weak a word. She not only began to follow Jesus, becoming one of his disciples. But Luke in his gospel also informs us at the beginning of his eighth chapter that she began to fund his ministry financially.

So this is from Luke chapter 8 verses 1 through 3. Soon afterward, he went through cities and villages preaching and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the 12 were with him, and also some women. Mary, called Magdalene, and Joanna, the wife of Chusa, Herod Stewart, and Susanna, who provided for them out of their means. Magdalene did not simply experience relief.

She experienced reconstitution. Christ did not merely remove something from her. He restored something to her, because the deepest wound caused by demonic domination is not only suffering. It is the loss of the self, the loss of membership in the community, the loss of God. He restored something to her. The deepest wound caused by demonic domination is not only suffering, it is the loss of the self, the loss of membership in the community, the loss of God. Under the domination of darkness, a person ceases to live from the inside out.

one's thoughts can no longer be trusted, one's emotions are no longer stable, one's will is no longer sovereign. The victim lives reactively rather than freely. Magdalene's liberation, therefore, was not simply the expulsion of demons. It was the restoration of her personhood. For the first time, she could think her own thoughts, she could desire her own desires, she could love without fear. And that is what Christ does inside a human life. He does not merely remove guilt.

He does not even merely restore a person to herself. He creates a new person. More than just giving back her interior unity and healing the fragmentation, his grace transforms the person into something far greater than she ever was. in doing so he brings a profound peace where chaos once reigned and this is why Magdalene

did not walk away unchanged she did not simply resume her own life she became one of the most devoted followers of Christ because liberation naturally gives birth to loyalty when someone has pulled you from the abyss you don't forget him

when someone has returned you to yourself, you don't walk away from him. And this explains something very striking. Magdalene supported and funded Christ's mission so that the freedom she had received from him could become the freedom of others. When Christ liberated Magdalene from the seven demons, her horizontal view, her basic understanding of reality, was radically transformed. She no longer saw herself as worthless,

but as chosen and beloved. She no longer experienced reality as chaotic, but as intelligible and ordered under God. She no longer believed she was alone, but accompanied by the Messiah himself. She no longer viewed her body as a battleground, but as her own again. She no longer saw the future

as closed and hopeless, but open and full of hope. She no longer believed darkness was ultimate, but that light held supreme authority. Her world did not merely improve. It became an entirely different world. But then something happened that caused this new horizontal view to collapse within Magdalene, the passion and death of the Lord on the cross.

Magdalene watched as the one who freed her from torment was tortured and killed. When his body was sealed in the tomb, her horizons shrank again. Now the darkness was not possession. It was grief. Her world became small once more. All she could see was loss and death. Only someone who had been freed from pain and torture like Magdalene could know how great a gift the experience of Christ is.

However, only a Magdalene could know the pain and torture of seeing Jesus being killed, seeing his limbs stretched on the cross, his body wounded and beaten, his face covered with his own blood. But when Jesus stopped breathing and his body became lifeless, Magdalene had to abandon every thought of a divine rescue. you. There would be no great display of power against Jesus's executioners. When she saw Jesus taken down from the cross, wrapped in the burial shroud, and laid in the tomb, and when the heavy stone was rolled across the entrance, something inside Magdalene collapsed. The one who had restored her to life was gone. For Magdalene, everything that seemed posthum,

with Jesus, now seemed impossible. One can only imagine the kind of suffering that began at this point within Magdalene. What would she do? What could life possibly have to offer if what Jesus offered died with him? She had believed in his promise of a better life of salvation. Now there was nothing. it would have been easy for Magdalene to lose all hope at this point. And scripture clearly indicates that she did wrestle with losing hope. When she saw the empty tomb on Easter morning, she wept. Then she ran to tell Peter that Jesus' body had been stolen. And she was so caught up in her grief that she did not recognize that Jesus was standing in front of her, speaking to her.

This clearly shows that she did not anticipate the resurrection, a fact that the gospel writer himself notes, John chapter 20, verse 9. These responses and reactions on Easter morning allow us to paint a fairly detailed picture of the kind of experience the death of Jesus was for Magdalene. Magdalene did not anticipate a resurrection. She did not expect to have to have a resurrection. She did not expect to happy ending to the tragedy of the Lord's execution. In addition, Magdalene had the duty of anointing the Lord's body, but she herself believed she would be unable to do this, since she knew she would be unable to roll back the stone, a stone which was very large. John chapter 20, verse four. This is how Mark describes the scene. When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene,

Mary the mother of James, and Salomey brought spices so that they may go and anoint him. So, Mary the mother of James and Salome were two sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary. So Mary the mother of James is the mother of James, and she's the wife of Clopas, the mother of St. James the less, and St. Jude. And Solemie is the mother of the two sons of thunder, John, the apostle, and his brother, James the Great. So it is unthinkable that when somebody died, that the family would not go and anoint the body. So these were not three unknown women. Mary the mother of James and Mary of Sollamy were Jesus' two aunts. Magdalene joins them. So. When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salomey brought spices so that they may go and anoint him.

Very early, when the sun had risen, on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb. They were saying to one another, who will roll back the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb? Mark 16, verses 1 through 3. with these two pieces of information that Magdalene did not anticipate a resurrection and that she did not believe she could even access Jesus' body, we can infer a third. Prior to setting out for the tomb, Magdalene must have profoundly wrestled with hope. She must have experienced feelings of helplessness and loneliness. She may have even experienced feelings of foolishness for allowing herself to believe in the marvel of Jesus's words,

that there was a happy ending for a sinner as great as she. The message of Jesus was a beautiful one. The promise he gave was magnificent, that a kingdom exists where sinners are forgiven and live in the company of God in eternal paradise. But while it was good to believe in it while it lasted, the one who made the promise was dead. Jesus had met his match and would not come back. He could not fulfill his promise. Jesus was gone.

Thus, one can ask, logically, what is Magdalene's purpose in setting out for the tomb on Easter morning? In her current horizontal view, it is utterly pointless to go to the tomb. At the tomb, there is only a body, one lying behind an immovable stone. Why then does she go? It would have been different if she anticipated Jesus rising from the dead, but she didn't. It would be different if she believed she could roll the stone back, but she didn't. So two forces are at work with her.

in Magdalene, the first rooted in her current understanding of reality, tells her to abandon hope that it is pointless to go to the tomb. In other words, she has reached the limit of her horizon. In her understanding of reality, there is no justification for setting out for the tomb. However, there is something deeper than her understanding alive within her. Her mind tells her that hope is finished, but her heart refuses to accept that verdict. In a way, she cannot explain, something within her makes her move toward the entombed Christ. She does not understand it. She cannot justify it, but something deep within her compels her to go to the tomb. And when she arrives at the tomb, she is distraught. The body is gone. She sees a

a man and thinks he's the gardener. In fact, Jesus intentionally created this unique moment in salvation history. Adam was placed in a garden and was told to cultivate and subdue the earth, because he was given dominion over it. His vocation, therefore, was to be the gardener of all of creation. However, Adam lost that dominion when he obeyed the suggestion of the serpent and sinfully ate the forbidden fruit. It is only fitting, though, that Jesus, the new Adam, having conquered the serpent and paid the full price for sin, should receive that dominion. In appearing as a gardener, tending the very garden in which he had been entombed, the risen Christ is not disguising himself, he is revealing himself. But then he speaks one word. Mary.

And in that moment, everything changes. In that voice, she recognizes who he is. But even more than that, in that voice, she discovers who she is. The world that had collapsed on Good Friday suddenly expands exponentially. When she hears her name, everything that Jesus had tried to teach her,

finally settled into her deepest core. That God's love for her is so great that he comes back from the grave to share it with her and then uses her to proclaim it to the others. Magdalene thus becomes aware that her value is so great that she is worth enduring crucifixion and death. That because God is a plan for her,

she is assured of a future full of happiness. She becomes aware that though Jesus is the one who died, she is the one who is rescued. In short, Jesus revealed who she truly is. In hearing her name spoken by Christ, Mary Magdalene finally understands her true identity. She is not defined by her past. She is not defined by the demons that once tormented her. she is a beloved daughter of God and that is why her exclamation is so fitting teacher magdalen of course is the first to whom the lord reveals the resurrection there is one detail

about that which i believe seems to disclose a biographical detail about her and a very important one so a bit of background in 591 a d Pope Gregory the Great delivered a homily, catalogued by scholars as homily 33, in which he identified what appears to be three different women as one in the same person. He believed that Mary Magdalene, the sinful woman who anoints Jesus' feet in Luke Chapter 7, and Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, are one in the same woman. While there's no direct textual evidence for this conclusion, Pope Gregory saw in the fact that Magdalene had seven demons, an allegory that led him to develop this theory. Pope Gregory's sermon was immensely influential.

While the Eastern Church never conflated the three individuals and kept them separate, the Western Church did. Recently, however, it has gone back to treating the biblical figures as three states. separate persons. I have no desire to either affirm or deny Pope St. Gregory's theory in this meditation. However, I do want to draw attention to one implication from it. Magdalene's identification with the sinful woman has led her to being associated with prostitution. For that reason, Magdalene has often been called the penitent. Case in point. point, whenever you see relics of hers, for example, you always see penitent written after her name.

When you see Magdalene depicted in art, you always see her holding an alabaster jar of ointment, with which the sinful woman anointed the Lord's feet. And she is always depicted with long hair, the hair that wiped the Lord's feet. I think that Christ's sending Magdalene to proclaim the resurrection to the apostles is an indirect affirmation of the fact that she was a prostitute. How? It rests on three facts. The first is that women in ancient Israel had a low social standing.

Among other things, they were forbidden to be legal witnesses, only men could be witnesses. Secondly, prostitution, while not illegal in ancient Israel, was considered a shameful and desperate profession, and a prostitute had even less standing than a typical woman. Thirdly, prostitutes often carry demons. If Magdalene were a prostitute, she would have been the lowest of the low in Jewish society.

And that fact might also explain how she obtained the seven demons. Any exorcist will tell you that sexual immorality is one of the most common ways for people to obtain demons because sex forms a bond between persons at their deepest level. A prostitute is, therefore, highly vulnerable to demonization. How fitting it would be, though, for Christ to send Magdalene, she who is unfit to be a witness, to be the witness that informs the apostles of the resurrection. Friends, I tell you, that would be exactly God's style.

Judas was the keeper of the money purse for Jesus and the disciples. We are informed that he was a thief who helped him. himself to the money, John chapter 12, verse 6, yet Jesus never removed Judas as his treasurer, but allowed him to retain the responsibility. Peter was a man who had control issues. We've covered that extensively in the second meditation of this Lenton series. Peter was never comfortable unless he had direct control of a situation. Yet Jesus appointed him as head of the 12. And even when Peter denied him, Jesus never removed Peter as the leader and boss of the church.

Jesus has a way of placing a person where we would least expect that person to be. He does this as part of the healing he desires to bring to that person. That's his style. Everyone's got a style. You have a style, I have a style. George Washington had a style. Fonzie had a style. What Jesus shows us repeatedly in the Gospels is that God himself has his own style. And it would be just like God to take a prostitute, someone whose testimony had zero value, whose presence carried only shame, a woman once

tormented by seven demons, and send her to the apostles with the message, I have seen the Lord. The tomb is empty. He has risen. Yes, for the God I know, this would be right up his alley. And it is for this reason that we call Magdalene the apostle to the apostles, she who was sent to those whom were sent. Jesus clearly puts the truth of Magdalene's own identity into focus. From him, Magdalene learned that she is loved by him, he who is love itself. This completely changed her horizontal view, giving her a new understanding of reality and causing her to call Jesus teacher, a fitting ex-coctuary.

in that moment of pure glory. And it is no accident that this event happened at dawn. For just as the rising sun reveals the horizon, the risen Christ reveals Magdalene to herself. Friends, it's been wonderful being with you these past four weeks. Every one of you will be in my prayers as we enter into the Holy Reefilion. rituals of Holy Week and the glorious celebration of Easter. In your goodness, please keep us here in your prayers as well. A most holy and blessed Easter to all of you. God bless you.