Found in Christ

So many of us come to the South of France in search of Mary Magdalene. We seek her traces in the land, in the caves, in the stories, in the remembered sanctity of place. We come with longing, with reverence, with the hope that something of her presence might meet us here.

And yet, I have been feeling more and more that Mary Magdalene's deepest mystery is not only that she came to France, but that she had already been found, so wholly and irrevocably, in Jesus Christ.

This was her true ground.

This was her true shore.

This was the inward belonging that gave meaning to every outward journey.

There is a subtle threshold for many of us here. We may begin by searching outwardly, drawn by sacred landscape, sacred memory, and sacred story. Yet the deeper invitation is always inward. Not simply to admire holiness from afar, but to be reoriented by the same love that claimed her. Not simply to seek the traces of Mary Magdalene, but to encounter the Christ in whom she was so profoundly found.

This transmission opens that sacred movement. It asks what happens when outer searching begins to soften, and a more interior belonging begins to arise. What does it mean to stop circling the edges of holiness and allow oneself to be gathered more wholly into Christ? What does it mean to let longing mature into devotion, fascination into surrender, and seeking into foundness?

This feels especially timely to me now, as life continues to strip away what is secondary and return me, again and again, to what is most essential. For perhaps all true pilgrimage, if followed deeply enough, brings us to this quiet revelation: that the heart is not only searching for a place, or a figure, or a story. It is searching to be found in Him.