Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. Your love is more delightful than wine. (Song of Songs, 1:2)

Many who visit Magdala come with sincere questions about the nature of Mary Magdalene’s relationship with Jesus Christ. Some admire Jesus as a countercultural Rabbi who surprisingly welcomed women among his disciples, while others, more skeptically, probe the familiar speculation that Mary Magdalene was his wife. Yet both groups typically leave Magdala with a deeper awareness that Mary Magdalene was transformed by an encounter with the Lord’s love and mercy.

The biblical book that most beautifully celebrates the mystery of transformative love is the Song of Songs according to the theologian Henri de Lubac. “This little book, from beginning to end, expresses the very heart of divine revelation diffused in all Scripture: it symbolically proclaims the great mystery of love—the union between God and humanity—foreshadowed in Israel and brought to fulfillment in the Incarnation of the Word.” The Song of Songs can be understood as a love letter from God to his people, in harmony with the prophetic tradition, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, which uses bridal imagery to describe God’s covenant relationship. This nuptial theme continues in the Gospels, where Christ is revealed as the Bridegroom of his Church, and reaches its fulfillment in the “marriage of the Lamb” in the Book of Revelation.  

Moreover, throughout the centuries, the saints have testified that the love expressed in the Song is not merely symbolic, but a reflection of their own personal experience of Christ’s love, something we also perceive in Mary Magdalene. As St. Gregory of Nyssa writes, “The bride is the soul… united to God by love, longing for the kiss of the Word… never satisfied in the desire to see Him, but always yearning for the One she loves.” It is as though the saints cry out for the Lord to reveal Himself directly, to speak with ‘his own mouth,’ in a personal encounter of love, a kiss not of earthly affection, but of divine wisdom and spiritual communion, the breath of God.  

This is precisely the experience with which Mary Magdalene was privileged, and it may explain why some have wrongly assumed she was Jesus’ wife: she lived a deeply personal and nuptial experience of God’s love, an experience to which every soul is ultimately called. This becomes especially clear on the morning of the Resurrection, when Mary Magdalene desires not explanations about Jesus, but the Lord Himself: “Tell me where you have put him, and I will take him.” (John 20:15) She no longer wishes merely to hear about Him, not even from the angels, but longs to be with Him personally, whose love is “more delightful than wine.”