Following the path of the rose

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1:12At the top of a mountain in the south of France, at the chapel of Mary Magdalene, I finally attended a funeral no one else knew was taking place. It was a pilgrimage that had started nine days earlier in London.

1:34So this is it. Next stop, Catwick Airport. No turning back now.

1:45You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Natasha Serlin, a Jewish, divorced mother of two. For this week's Heart and Soul, I'm on my way to join a pilgrimage following in the footsteps of Mary Magdalene. Until a few months ago, I was not someone who had ever imagined going on pilgrimage, let alone a Christian one. In fact, I knew almost nothing about Mary Magdalene. But months earlier, I'd picked up a book about her and found myself unexpectedly captivated. These words from the book stayed with me. Mary revealed that love is within us. We are love, and we don't have to earn or prove or deserve this fact.

2:29And if we can recognise that we've never been separate from it, and bring it forth outside of us, this is what saves us. For years, Mary Magdalene was represented as a sinner, a penitent prostitute. But in 2016, she was officially recognized by Pope Francis as Apostle to the Apostles and first witness of the resurrection. And her vital role in Christian mythology and scripture became more widely apparent. So here I am, traveling to the Pyrenees in Europe, to trace the route she is said to have taken across France, to the cave at La Sainte-Bourgne, where she is believed to have spent the last 30 years of her life.

3:13Hello, I feel like I know everyone because I've seen one on stage. On the pilgrimage, there are 11 other women from around the world, none of whom I've met before, but all with their own personal stories as to why this journey is important for them. It had been about two months that I had received a diagnosis for a mass in my ovary, and the doctor didn't know exactly what it was, but it was huge, it was 13 inches big. So I truly feel that there was a grace that moved me to make the decision to come. The remembrance of beauty through experiences of pain and knowing that you're not alone and that too, being able to feel supported and held.

4:04For me, when the invitation to join this pilgrimage landed in my inbox, I took it as a sign. I was at a moment in my life when I was carrying more than I knew what to do with. I had lost my mother, been through a divorce, and lost someone I loved very deeply. Our first stop is in Spain. We're heading to Montserrat to see the Black Madonna, a wooden statue of a black Virgin Mary, which was discovered in a mountain cave by shepherds in the year 880 AD. Listening to the bells with the rain, the wind. We're welcomed by our guides, Leslie Lacobost and Aud Baras. Here at a hermitage, on the top of the great mountain of Montserrat, bowing in incredible gratitude, asking for protection and guidance on this journey together.

4:57For as we walk in 12, we get to remember with every step what we are here for. may every one of our steps be an offering into deeper surrender into this great beauty oh my goodness that is literally the biggest rainbow I have ever seen it's incredible when my mum died I kept on seeing rainbows so this felt like an auspicious sign we had come to Montserrat to see the Black Madonna but already I felt like the pilgrimage had swept me up on a journey into a new world being on the mountain and seeing the rainbow that made me cry that was just so powerful so beautiful and it's my sign from my mum when she died gosh it's only my first day of pilgrimage and it feels like something profound happening today we left Montserrat in Spain and we drove through the Pyrenees into France Tonight we're staying in this lovely kind of guest house with a woman called Sophia Alatea, who is very devoted to Mary Magdalene.

6:11So it's a kind of big rambling house with like pictures of goddesses and saints and Frida Kahlo and beautiful flowers everywhere. I wanted to meet the woman who created this haven. So I'm looking at Alethea and her eyes are so sparkly and blue and beautiful and light and open. It makes me actually want to cry.

6:34Natasha Serlin:My darling, if I may say, I see it coming out of you too. We are most definitely sharing love with one another. Yeah, it's two-way traffic. My name is Alethea Sophia. I first came to this region in 1999 and within days, like yourself, I was captured by some kind of spirit that was calling me on a quest. And tell me about what you've created here. It's an old summer schoolhouse for children run by the Catholic Church. And even before then, where we're sitting right now, used to be a home for six to eight young Jesuit priests who were here for silence and solace and working the land in prayer. You are being invited into a home, a sanctuary, a refuge for kindred spirits who are all being drawn here by the rose, Mary Magdalene, the safety, the somatic ease of the place.

7:43Natasha Serlin:It's a haven. It's almost her embrace. It's her heart that we're landing in. How were you drawn here? How were you drawn to Mary Magdalene? From a very early age, I began to pray quite simply because I wanted to. My father was a Catholic, so he taught me how to. And he had what I would call a great love for Jesus and the Holy Spirit. He would often cry when praying because he was coming into contact with that love. So I'm looking on in awe and wonder, saying to myself, I want some of this. So I prayed. And even as I was a drunken, raving teenager, I would still slump into bed at the end of my night or nights and start praying.

8:36Natasha Serlin:so there I was journaling away whilst praying and in comes a voice from the same area as my Jesus place and it said if you really want to know me come to France felt like Jesus but I knew that's not his voice but by golly it's close. Within days I was called to come to France and so my own Indiana Jones journey began and just trying to figure out her sacred places. So I've been snatched. I can't leave. All I can do is embed myself further which I am now finally surrendered to. And create a beacon for other people to come and find sanctuary and find her in. Gosh, absolutely. I feel as if every part of me is in service to her, to Jesus, to the Holy Spirit, in our age, in our age, our language, our storytelling, our transmission of the grace, free of religion, free of dogma, free of conscription.

9:53Natasha Serlin:It's just, it's plentiful. It's generous. And it's here. Actually, what you just said really touches me and resonates because for me, this is not a religious journey. And it, yeah, it's free of dogma.

10:13I'm actually sitting in a spot just at the edge of some woods. on a little bench surrounded by green with a Mary Magdalene statue behind me. I didn't really understand why we were starting in Spain and going to see the Black Medulla. But now I do understand that really that was about the beginning, the Divine Mother. I feel like now we're in the right headspace to begin our Mary Magdalene pilgrimage.

10:50Now the journey really starts, because from here on, this pilgrimage becomes less about following a route, and more about opening to what Mary Magdalene might mean for each of us as individuals. She is being reimagined here, not simply as a figure from scripture, but as someone whose story of love, grief, endurance, and transformation may hold echoes of our own. and so Leslie and Ode begin by asking us to let go of what we think we know. Connecting to the consciousness of Magdalene in whatever way she speaks to you and releasing all preconceptions of who she is of what you've read, what you've heard, what you've seen allow her to present herself to you in this place of expansion because she's the doorway to something greater within.

11:51It's day three and I'm now sitting in my room. I can hear the running water outside and the room is a haven to all things Mary Magdalene. I feel really peaceful today, quiet, soft. I don't know what's unfolding I feel like I'm on this pilgrimage because some I think a door or some portal some things will change and open but I don't know what so this is about remaining present in the void of not knowing and accepting that and on the windy bus journey through the the gorges and the mountains I started thinking about the questions I wanted to ask myself and share as part of my pilgrimage. My questions to myself.

12:51What is a pilgrim? What does being on a pilgrimage mean to me? Why have I come on a pilgrimage? What do I hope will come from this pilgrimage? And I'm going to start with, why have I come on a Mary Magdalene pilgrimage I think I have been through so much in the past three years from my mother passing my marriage ending and the death of my beloved and that's been the most significant I think I think finding that love and losing that love I think finding that love opened my heart again after my marriage ending and I think losing that love has opened my heart because that has felt like the only way to open and to soften and to be more raw and more present and the love hasn't gone the love is still with me and that's what's so incredible and that's why I was drawn to the Mary Magdalene pilgrimage.

14:25In the morning at Le Comte in France, we anointed each other with nard oil, the same precious oil, Mary Magdalene is said to have used to anoint Jesus before his death. In Christian tradition, Mary Magdalene's anointing of Jesus is remembered as an act of extraordinary devotion. Nard was precious, worth a year's salary, and her decision to pour it onto his feet from an alabaster jar was criticised by some of the other disciples as excessive. But the gesture has endured as one of tenderness, intimacy and preparation for death, and is felt by many to epitomise her message of love, inner awakening and union.

15:07One of the women had lost her grandmother in the night. As I wiped her tears and anointed her forehead, I felt what it meant to truly tend to another person's grief. And as the oil was pressed into my own skin, I felt something else too. I was realising that what we honour becomes more sacred. And like the nard oil itself, I could feel the impact of that sinking in. On the shore, right, like she did 2 ,000 years ago, arriving on these waters on a boat without oar. It was here on the French coast, at Saint-Marie-de-la-Mer, that Mary Magdalene was said to have arrived on a boat with no sails and no oars after being exiled from Judea.

15:53As Odd told us more, I began to visualize Mary Magdalene's journey, imagining her world. Like if all of these are legends, legends are just opening us to deeper layers of ourselves, right? And I think for me, pilgrimage is that. There's stories, there's land, there are places, but then it's your own pilgrimage. It's your own relationship. When have you found yourself on the boat without oar? Exiled. No knowing how you're going to make it. Who was on that boat with you? What did you pray to for it to bring you to shore? And what was it that was this intuition that knew that there was a way for you to come back?

16:34And how that intuition then perhaps guided you in a safe way to move toward that destiny that you didn't even know was there. How was that destiny already a seed before the exile happened? But we had to have the exile to remember it. Amma, a small beaming woman with sparkling brown eyes and short grey curly hair, began to pray and cry. When I'm really, really in it, when I really am connected, I weep. I am deeply grateful, deeply honoured and humbled for my path, for my journey, for all of our journeys, for everything that had to happen to bring us to this moment, in this time, in this space, It's right here in these stones, right here where Mary Magdalene came.

17:31You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

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18:47I'm Natasha Serlin, and for Heart and Soul, I'm following in the footsteps of Mary Magdalene, who is said to have come to live in the cave of La Sainte-Bomme in southern France, in the middle of an ancient forest for the last 30 years of her life. From Saint-Marie-de-la-Mer, we began to trace the waterways to the cave of Saint-Bomme. Oud, our guide, invited us to truly let ourselves feel the waters. today as we're doing the waterways feeling the waters moving your body feeling where is there frozen waters and how can i let those waters melt so i can follow through that arc and get to the source and here we are 12 incredible souls called by magdalene sitting around the source of water in the forest in the mountain that holds her cave and holds the essence of her presence

19:44The discovery of ancient manuscripts at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, along with the recovery of Mary's own gospel, has completely reshaped her understanding of early Christianity. These teachings have revealed Mary Magdalene as a visionary and Christ's closest companion, some say beloved. A spiritual teacher who embodied his teachings and made them uniquely her own, a woman both fully human and fully divine. And now here I am, witnessing how powerfully this reimagined Magdalene resonates, especially for women navigating transitions of their own. As I trace the path of the rose, with women from all over the world, irrespective of their different backgrounds, faiths and spiritual denominations, all united through this symbol of Mary Magdalene, operating outside of this Christian paradigm, responding to a need for something more, something else, something that perhaps through Magdalene they realize already exists inside themselves.

20:51As we make our way along the waterways towards the cave, I felt drawn to find out what being here means to lovely Amma. It means that I'm being called to a higher calling that I could not have even discerned from the level of consciousness that I was at last year, even before that, because I was still very much in my mind, still operating from a lot of childhood wounds. I suppose this is like a before and after. There was Amma before this trip, and there's a birthing of a new Amma with a different consciousness, with a different awareness. One thing I love about everything that's being shared on this pilgrimage is that Mary Magdalene is all about love, unconditional love.

21:51In these few days, we've all become sisters. We're no longer... Listening to Amma share her story, I began to wonder whether part of the reason pilgrimage is experiencing a revival is because modern life offers so few rituals for navigating change. So many of the structures that once marked life's major transitions have thinned or disappeared altogether. And pilgrimage seems to offer something different. Time. Ritual. Slowness. Community. and permission to mark change, an opportunity for transformation. Looking at the pilgrimage as a journey inward, a journey through one's history, feelings, emotions and a different path that lead to people's awareness of the divine light within them all.

22:47and as I sit on an ancient rock in an ancient forest and breathe and listen to the birdsong, I have a single tear running down my cheek and I'm not crying, so I don't really know why, but I can feel it trace its path along my skin.

23:11Finally, we reach the cave where Mary Magdalene is said to have lived for the last 30 years of her life. Just a few more steps.

23:25Lights illuminate the cave. And I'm going to take a step over the threshold. This feels like a sacred moment as I enter. As I enter, a fryer lovingly cleans the candles. I close my eyes and I can smell the scent of incense and earth and water. It feels like I can smell centuries of devotion.

23:57It's early morning. The sky is pale blue, apricot pink, where the sun is going to rise soon. It literally looks celestial. so we're going up to the top of the mountain where Mary Magdalene is set to ascend seven times a day to see the sunrise. Yeah, today's our last full day. Good morning.

24:26Natasha Serlin:Good morning. It was at this point that memories of special moments with my beloved came flooding back. and as we walk up the mountain this morning i'm remembering him and how he was so good and so kind and took everything on to ease everyone else's burdens and i'm remembering being in the forest with him and noticing everything like it was in technicolor, the trees, the colors, the sounds. Now we talked about it, as I'm practicing it this morning, walking up the mountain, I feel such an intense wave, missing it.

25:20And I guess this is part of the magic of the pilgrimage, having the space to let these memories emerge and be held and treasured and released released to the rose no less treasured but not carrying them as burdens leaving a felt resonance an imprint of joy not grief

25:53so we're at the top of the mountain walking to the ascension chapel very rocky on the precipice it's like being on top of the world Standing here I could feel her presence resonating through the centuries no longer buried but here to be experienced and made tangible This was built in the 1800s I think there's a mark somewhere down there and this was built to mark her spot of ascension it literally is above the cave and then they decided to build this so that people would see her it says that in the first century people would see her elevate during that time you know imagine that the transcendent of that see her see her but to me is it real or is it a mythological opening into what is possible

26:56You want to step inside? You can leave your stuff outside and if somebody wants to be in charge to anoint everybody

27:07Roses on the altar of the sea

27:17She is called At the chapel, marking the point where Mary Magdalene was said to have ascended seven times a day, I had the ritual that I didn't even realize I needed. I lit a candle and stood before the altar, and for the first time, it felt as though I could honor what I had lost without being consumed by it. I still have grief, but I no longer feel as though I'm living inside it. And the idea of a love beyond death, which drew me here in the first place. I understand it more completely now. The love is in me. I am not separate from it. It makes sense to me now.

28:08In the Path of the Rose, for Heart and Soul, was produced and presented by me, Natasha Serlin, with original music by Sandra Orellana Sears And the executive producer is Rajiv Gupta.