THIS SUNDAY at Christ Church Cathedral we observe the festival of Mary, the Magdalene.
This is a celebration of recovery, as we retrieve the lost memory of significant ministry by women as disciples and apostles in the earliest Jesus movement.
Despite the later efforts of male church leaders to elimimnate Mary and her sisters from the tradition, a memory of her survived in Scripture and in other early Christian literature outside the Bible.
This classic modern icon of the Magdalebe by Robert Lentz was created for Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
The icon features Mary as a Middle Eastern woman, and reminds us of the ethnicity of Jesus' first followers—and perhaps also invites us to pray for the Christians in the Middle East today, many of whom trace the origins of their faith communities back to the first centuries after Jesus.
For more on this icon, see the blog by Philip Jenkins at patheos.com
Our special guest this Sunday is Bishop Richard Hurford, former Dean of Grafton and former Bishop of Bathurst.
Join us for the festival Eucharist at 9.00am, and stay for the Drean's Forum at 10.30am, when Bishop Richard will share some reflections on the mission of the Church (and especially a Cathedral) today.