Dear
Friends,
We know her,
but we don’t know her. I mean Mary
Magdalene, whose feast we celebrate in a new way this coming Friday, throughout
the church.
Luke alone
tells us that Mary of Magdala was first among women to follow Jesus during His
public ministry and that He, Jesus had restored her to strength and fullness (8.1-2): “Accompanying Jesus were the Twelve and some women who had been cured of evil
spirits and infirmities [including] Mary of Magdala from whom seven demons had
gone out…”
In Gospel times, to identify someone as being
“of” a certain place was not to emphasize a specific location but it was a way
of identifying a person with reverence within a community. This Mary: Mary of
Magdala, and no other. Twelve times in the Gospel accounts, Mary of Magdala is
named exactly that way. Moreover, placement in a list of names, in biblical
times was significant. Mary Magdalene is
always named first in a list of women present at the death
and burial of Jesus and at the empty
tomb.
Nowhere in
Scripture is she ever called a prostitute. Her very clear place in the
community got conflated in subsequent centuries with the nameless women who anointed Jesus
with oil or were identified as prostitutes. Pope Gregory the Great (540-604)
was notable in his designation of Mary Magdalene as a public reformed sinner. The image stuck for centuries. She became a wanton woman in need of repentance
and a life of hidden and silent penitence. Gone was the revered title “Apostle to the Apostles", given to her perhaps as early as the third
century by Hippolytus. Enter Mary Magdalene of Jesus Christ Superstar and The
Last Temptation of Christ.
Even though
Mary of Magdala was at the cross and burial, these alone would not be
sufficient to elicit the great regard the early church had for her. Most
importantly, she was venerated as the first witness of the Resurrection the
first to see the Risen Christ in the Gospel of John.
There in the
garden, on the morning of that first day of the week, Mary lingered after Peter
and John had departed without seeing Him. She wept and she did not recognize
Jesus until He spoke her name: Mary: That Mary recognized the voice of Jesus
calling her underscores that Mary is a true disciple. She then went, at Jesus'
command, to tell the others that He was alive.
“I have seen
the Lord” she told them, long before Paul used those words “I have seen the
Lord” to confirm his own discipleship.
The witness
of Mary to the Resurrection was so clearly accepted by the early Church that it
could not be dislodged as the Gospel texts were being framed. Who would have
thought that God would want the primary witness of a woman to such a defining
moment of faith?
As of July
22 -- this Friday -- the whole church will celebrate the feast of Mary Magdalene,
Apostle to the Apostles, not as an obligatory memorial but with a status
equivalent to the feasts of some other Apostles. Our congregation invites you, and
others you may choose to bring with you, to our Motherhouse for our 11:30 am Mass
for this historic, joyous celebration of
the restored recognition of Mary Magdalene as Apostle to the Apostles.
