Study Guide: The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 16

Anonymous provides Chapter 16 (43-45) with this summary:

How the sinner, converted and called to contemplation, experiences perfection sooner than through any other work, immediately receiving God’s forgiveness of sin

And in the first paragraph he introduces us to Mary Magdalene (she will appear often in The Cloud) as she is presented in Luke 7:

36-39 One of the Pharisees asked him over for a meal. He went to the Pharisee’s house and sat down at the dinner table. Just then a woman of the village, the town harlot, having learned that Jesus was a guest in the home of the Pharisee, came with a bottle of very expensive perfume and stood at his feet, weeping, raining tears on his feet. Letting down her hair, she dried his feet, kissed them, and anointed them with the perfume. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man was the prophet I thought he was, he would have known what kind of woman this is who is falling all over him.”

40 Jesus said to him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”

“Oh? Tell me.”

41-42 “Two men were in debt to a banker. One owed five hundred silver pieces, the other fifty. Neither of them could pay up, and so the banker canceled both debts. Which of the two would be more grateful?”

43-47 Simon answered, “I suppose the one who was forgiven the most.”

“That’s right,” said Jesus. Then turning to the woman, but speaking to Simon, he said, “Do you see this woman? I came to your home; you provided no water for my feet, but she rained tears on my feet and dried them with her hair. You gave me no greeting, but from the time I arrived she hasn’t quit kissing my feet. You provided nothing for freshening up, but she has soothed my feet with perfume. Impressive, isn’t it? She was forgiven many, many sins, and so she is very, very grateful. If the forgiveness is minimal, the gratitude is minimal.”

48 Then he spoke to her: “I forgive your sins.”

49 That set the dinner guests talking behind his back: “Who does he think he is, forgiving sins!”

50 He ignored them and said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”

As this rendering from Eugene Peterson’s The Message makes abundantly clear, Luke gives us a story both about sorrow for sins committed and an amazing love for Jesus. About her love, Anonymous is emphatic: 

Sekirly for sche loved mochel -- lo!; that is, for certainly she loved much--lo!). 

Mary is overwhelmed by “this secret nudge of love . . . . It’s stronger than anything” (43). Anonymous can’t help but emphasize that in experiencing sorrow for her sins, Mary is also deeply in love with Jesus’ divinity, even as not a few readers have said, “erotically so.”

Mary has a “hole in her heart” for Jesus, and “sometimes she became so immersed in this sweetness [of love for Jesus] that she had little real awareness of herself as a sinner” (44).  In other words, as strong as her remorse for her sins may have been, her love for Jesus is stronger by far.  She gifts Jesus with perfume and on her knees she washes his feet with her hair.  It is for her love, displayed so openly and without reservation, that Jesus commends her.  Mary is a contemplative in love with Jesus.

In paragraph four, Anonymous looks at what Mary Magdalene did and did not do, and he praises her for not doing something. What did she not do. How did that not doing help her?  How might it help us?

In paragraph five, our Teacher tells us what Mary did by “not having eyes” for Jesus and his beautiful human self. How do we also do what Mary did and so come to be like her?  Or in the language of Anonymous, how do we “hang up” our love for God and our longing for him "in the cloud of unknowing”?