Between Death and Life: Trauma,Divine Love and the Witness of Mary Magdalene

Abstract

In this article, I explore the witness of Mary Magdalene for its potential to contribute to discussions of survival and healing taking place in discourses of trauma. Through a reading of the Johannine text and an examination of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s depiction of Mary’s witness in Heart of the World, I claim that the obstructions of Mary’s witness are constitutive of what it means to witness between cross and resurrection. Through her ‘unseeing’, she testifies to the unique configuration of divine love between death and life. Mary’s witness not only provides an entrance into thinking about the experience of ‘middleness’ in trauma, it opens up a rich pneumatology in the wake of the cross.