During a recent visit to Montreal, the city of my birth, the city of my youth, I took in the exhibition of Auguste Rodin’s work at the Montreal Museum of Fine Art. It was a little like being in his studio, discovering how the artist worked in clay and plaster, marble and bronze. I saw several versions of his famous Thinker. But when I finally came upon his marble sculpture of Mary Magdalene embracing the dying, crucified Jesus, I was deeply moved.
I was unable to find a photograph of the work, though photography would probably tend to emphasize the nude body of Mary Magdalene. But she is not nude; she is naked. She is not presented for the admiration of her physical beauty. Her garments lie around her ankles, as though she had just dropped them in order to share fully in the humiliation of the naked Jesus.
Hers is a totally shameless gesture of communion with Christ. It recognizes and calls attention to the historical meaning of crucifixion, which was in fact a shaming ritual focused first and foremost on exposing to public humiliation the stark naked body of the one who dared to challenge the absolute power of the Roman state. Physical suffering was a necessary but secondary part of the ritual. Out of a sense of reverence, most crucifixes do not exhibit Jesus as stark naked.
The polished figures are less than life-size. The cross is not evident in this marble masterpiece, except for the subtle outlines of the nail-heads in the palms of Jesus’ outstretched hands. His lifeless head rests horizontally on Mary’s left shoulder. With her right hand she embraces his back. Over his head, the rough-hewn white marble seems to hang like the wright of all the world.
What Rodin reveals is a communion of love–a Eucharist really–in which Mary Magdalene seems to say, “This is my body which is given to you.” Though John’s Gospel (19:25) is not explicit on this matter, Mary Magdalene and the others standing at the cross all share implicitly in Jesus’ humiliation. In the Middle East, when anyone is shamed, the person’s whole family is shamed, as well as the community and the village. This is the origin of “honour killings,” which seek to restore a family’s honour by wiping out whoever brought about the shaming. Rodin’s art reveals, as only art can, the reality concealed beneath the surface appearance of the gospel scene.
In this startling work, Magdalene seeks not to erase or conceal the shaming of Jesus but to identify with him in his humiliation, in his shamelessness. Rodin’s understanding is at one with Ignatius Loyola’s in his understanding of the Passion of Christ as found in the Third Week of the Spiritual Exercises, where we are asked simply to be with Jesus in his Passion. The artist gives us a Magdalene who is wholly with Jesus, both body and soul, in a love that transcends humiliation.