Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene appears in all four Gospels. She, along with a group of other well-to-do women, Susanna and Joanna, financed the Kingdom of God movement and attended and supported Jesus from Galilee through Judea.
Mary M knew what it meant to be healed and delivered from a place of darkness. Luke tells us that seven demons were expelled from her. Courageously she broke through the barriers of Middle Eastern culture as one of his disciples, sitting, as it were, at the rabbi’s feet. Generous and faithful, she followed Jesus intimately.
Staying with him to the bitter end (Golgotha), it was she and the other myrrh bearers who heard the very first Easter proclamation. According to the Fourth Gospel, she herself was the first to directly hear the earth shattering news. “Rabboni” she calls him. It was a term of endearment. And in exchange, he intimately spoke her name, “Mary.” As John would have it, the very first words of the Risen One was the mention of her name.
She is the first Christian missionary as she is “sent” by the glorified Christ to “go and tell” the Easter good news. “I have seen the Lord,” she alerts the eleven. But they wouldn’t believe her.
History and culture have wrongly labeled her. Not once in the Gospels is it suggested that she was a member of the world’s oldest profession. As a woman of means, she was financially set. After all, she, and fellow patrons Joanna and Susanna, kept the movement going.
Pope Gregory I (c.564-604) wrote that she had been involved in “forbidden acts.” What else does a misogynist culture do with a strong independent woman? They had to put her in her place. Prostitute? In 1969 Pope St. Paul VI declared her otherwise. Recently, Pope Francis ordered that she forever be known as the “apostle of the apostles,” lifting today’s feast to the level of that of any of the apostles, of equal rank.
Many of us have been maligned and unjustly, even cruelly, labeled. The Magdalene’s story reminds us that God alone is our rock, our shield. Like Mary's, our passion and perseverance, too, must come from an intimate relationship with Jesus. Intimate in him as the Magdalene was, we too may address him so: “Rabboni.”
Pause for a time and listen. Hear the voice of the Risen One as he gently speaks your name. Revel in this for a time.
—Timothy J. Cronin