by Joan Wolf
John came over to Mary immediately and brought all of us to a space by the window. Then he went back to join the ten remaining apostles standing in the front of the room.
Peter opened the meeting by leading us all in prayer. When we finished he looked up at us and said, “I have called you here today to choose a replacement for Judas. We have always been the Twelve, and it is important that we become the Twelve again. I believe this is what the Lord would have wished. It is crucial that we choose someone who has been a longtime disciple, who has often listened to the Lord preach, and who has the ability to spread his message to others.”
I hadn’t thought about replacing Judas, who had hanged himself when he realized what his betrayal had caused. The apostles hated him, but I couldn’t help feeling pity for the young man who had misjudged his actions so fatally. I considered Peter’s idea now and thought it was a good one. To leave Judas’ place empty would always be a reminder of his betrayal. Better for them to fill it and become the Twelve again.
A man standing near the front of the room called out the name of Barsabbas, saying, “He has been a disciple of the Lord since his earliest days in Galilee. He would be a good addition to the Twelve.”
I searched for Barsabbas in the group and found him. Behind his black beard and thick black eyebrows, he was looking very grave. He was a good man, I thought. He would do very well.
Nicodemus spoke next. “I would like to suggest Matthias. He’s been one of the most faithful of disciples, also following the Lord throughout Galilee and Judea.”
Matthias, who was standing next to Nicodemus, lowered his eyes. Matthias was younger than Barsabbas and more of a leader. I thought I might prefer him.
Peter waited, offering other people a chance to put a name before the group. There was a long pause, and Peter was lifting his hand to close the suggestions when Andrew spoke up. “I think our twelfth apostle should be Mary of Magdala.”
James, who was standing next to me, stiffened. Most of the male faces in the room looked stunned. Andrew moved his eyes from face to face as he spoke. “Mary is the only one among us who never failed him. She always understood what he meant. And—if you remember—she was the one who stayed with him during the whole of his crucifixion, while the rest of us hid in this room, afraid.”
The men who had been looking so stunned dropped their eyes. The women were smiling at me.
The apostle James said truculently, “My brother John didn’t desert him. Mary wasn’t the only one who stood under his cross!”
John shook his head slowly. “That may be true, James, but I often disappointed him. We all did.” He looked along the line of the apostles standing next to him. “We all failed him at one time or another. We quarreled over foolish things. We worried about our rank in his kingdom. We didn’t understand.”
He moved his eyes to me.
“Mary always understood. The Master loved her more than any of us because she was the one who saw him most clearly. She was the one he appeared to first.”
Our eyes held. There would always be a special bond between John and me. Then he smiled. “That’s why I don’t think we should name Mary to be one of the Twelve.”
Martha put her hand on my arm, as if to comfort me.
I patted her fingers. John continued to look at me. “You stand alone, Mary of Magdala. You were beloved of the Lord, and your honor is your own, not to be shared with anyone else.”
My heart swelled as we looked at each other. Oh, John. You will be a great witness for the Lord. And thank you for being there for us on that terrible day.
He nodded slightly, as if he had understood my thoughts.
I was so deeply moved that I had to struggle to hold back my tears.
Lazarus put an arm around my shoulders and said, “Thank you, John.”
John nodded. Then he turned back to Peter and said gruffly, “So we have Barsabbas and Matthias. Are there any other names?”
There were none. Peter raised his arms in prayer and we all followed his lead. “Lord, who knows the hearts of all, show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry from which Judas has turned away.”
The apostles handed two small pieces of marked parchment to everyone in the room. The X was for Barsabbas and the O for Matthias. Thomas went around with a basket, and each of us put one piece into it, signifying our choice. When the lots were counted, Matthias had been chosen.
The Twelve were complete once more.
The holy spirit descended in wind and fire upon the apostles. I heard about it from Nicodemus, who was there when it happened. Perhaps the most amazing thing was the way the apostles’ preaching had been heard by many foreign Jews who were in Jerusalem on pilgrimage. They had understood the apostles as if they were speaking in the visitors’ own languages.
The Holy Spirit came to me in a different way. Ever since Jesus left I had been thinking about what he wanted from me. He hadn’t given any specific instructions; he simply wanted me to go out and “teach all nations.” Those words had set me on fire when he spoke them, but once the radiance of his presence was gone, I was faced with reality. How would I accomplish this mission?
My enlightenment was not as remarkable as the tongues of fire that descended on the apostles. It came one afternoon as I was in the village, and a troop of Roman soldiers came riding in. They were heading for Jerusalem and had stopped to water their horses.
Now Jerusalem lay only two miles to the south of Bethany, and normally soldiers would have waited to water their horses at the cavalry headquarters there. But these didn’t; they stopped in Bethany. And their leader, a lieutenant who had been stationed in Sepphoris, recognized me.
We began to talk in Latin, and he asked me if I knew anything about the so-called prophet recently executed by Pontius Pilate. I told him I was one of the man’s followers.
He was intrigued, and all the rest of the troop listened intently as we spoke. It occurred to me that few of the Romans I had known in Sepphoris believed in their gods anymore. They paid lip service to the deities they had modeled after the Greek gods, but they didn’t believe in their reality. The emperor had become their god, but the recent emperors had failed catastrophically as moral examples to the people. Tiberius had turned into a degenerate and had moved to the island of Capri, leaving his hated general, Sejanus, as acting emperor in Rome.
Romans, particularly the lesser folk, might be eager to learn about a God who cared about the poor, the outcast, the women and children. I thought of Fulvius Petrus in Capernaum, who had become a follower of Jesus. And then I thought of Julia. How much I longed to have my second mother become a believer in the Lord.
And why shouldn’t she? Jesus didn’t care what she ate or what she wore. He didn’t care about her past life. What he cared about was her present, and I knew from Julia’s letters that she was finding her present life increasingly empty.
My rejection of Marcus had made a deep impression on her, and I felt she was searching for more to believe in than a successful social life. In her letters she had often inquired about Jesus and what I saw in him.
After the soldiers left, I walked back to the house. Lazarus had just come in from a day with the apostles, who had begun to preach about Jesus in the very courtyard of the Temple. We sat down to talk.
“There have been many baptisms in Jerusalem, Mary. I don’t know how long the Sanhedrin will tolerate our open presence in the Temple, but many of the people who heard the apostles have been asking for someone to go to their country and tell about the Lord. Soon we will have to decide who is to go where. James, the brother of the Lord, has sworn to remain in Jerusalem no matter how difficult the Sanhedrin might make it for him.”
It was starting.
“I think I might have a different mission,” I said, and then I told Lazarus everything I had been thinking about since speaking to the Roman lieutenant.
“There are certainly many Jews in Sepphoris,” he said. “Perhaps Martha and I could
spread the word to them while you work with the Romans.”
“And there are so many villages around Sepphoris, Lazarus. These people are hard-working farmers and workmen. They need to hear the Word of the Lord; they need to know how important they are to him.”
He reached out and took both my hands into his. “We may not be going to the ends of the earth, Mary, but I think we can make a good start in Sepphoris. There will be plenty for us to do there, I think.”
And so that’s what we did. Lazarus, Martha, and I went to stay with Julia and commenced the conversion of western Galilee, both Jews and Romans, to the religion preached by Jesus, the Christ. He was with us all the while, as he had promised, and our successes came because of the faith he had in us and the faith we had in him.
Glory be to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joan Wolf was born in the Bronx, only a few miles from Yankee Stadium. She has spent most of her adult life in Connecticut, where she and her husband raised two children and a wide assortment of animals. She started out writing books by hand at a table in the Milford Public Library more years ago than she cares to remember. She’s the author of A Reluctant Queen and The Road to Avalon, lauded as “historical fiction at its finest,” by Publisher’s Weekly.
