16th Week in Ordinary Time, St. Mary Magdalene

Liturgy of the Word:

Sg. 4:1-4 or 2 Cor. 5:14-17

Ps. 62:2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9

Jn. 20:1-2, 11-18

Some Notes on St. Mary Magdalene

1. Also called Mary of Magdala, a city near Tiberias on the west shore of Galilee, Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus’s most celebrated disciples, famous, according to Mk. 16:9-10 and Jn. 20:14-17, for being the first person to see the Risen Christ. Jesus cleansed her of seven demons (Lk. 8:2; Mk. 16:9). Biblical exegesis teaches that the expression “seven demons” could indicate a serious physical or moral malady rather than evil spirits. She was among some other women who accompanied and ministered to Jesus in Galilee out of their own resources (Lk. 8:1-3).

2. All four Gospels attest that she witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion and burial. She stood at the foot of the cross, near the Blessed Mother, and the “beloved disciple” (Mk. 15:40; Mt. 27:56; Lk. 23:49; Jn. 19:25). Having seen where Jesus was buried, (Mk. 15:47), she went with two other women on Easter morning to the tomb to anoint Jesus’s body. But finding the tomb empty, she ran to report this to the disciples.

3. She returned with St. Peter who, astonished, left her. Christ then appeared to Mary and instructed her to tell the Apostles that he was ascending to God (Jn. 20:17). For telling the Apostles that Christ had risen from the dead, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Thomas Aquinas, and others called her “Apostola Apostolorum,” the “Apostle of the Apostles.”

4. The Greek Fathers, as a whole, distinguish three women: the sinner (Lk. 7:36-50); the sister of Martha and Lazarus (Lk. 10:38-42: Jn. 11); and Mary Magdalene. Origen and other early textual interpreters usually viewed her as distinct from the mystical Mary of Bethany (sister of Martha and Lazarus) who anointed Jesus’s feet and wiped them with her hair (Jn. 12:3-7), and from the penitent woman whose sins Jesus pardoned for anointing him in like fashion (Lk. 7:36-50).

The two anointings were made in different places, Luke’s in Galilee, John’s in Judea. They were performed by different women, a repentant sinner in Luke, a very close friend of Jesus in John.

5. The Eastern Church also distinguishes between the three but, after they were identified as one and the same by St. Gregory the Great around 591, Mary Magdalene’s cult flourished in the West. On the other hand, most of the Latins hold that the three women were one and the same. Modern scholars have since challenged the identification and hold that the three women were distinct.

6. The Greek Church believes that Mary Magdalene retired to Ephesus (near modern Selçuk, Turkey) with the Blessed Virgin and St. John the Evangelist. There she died and her relics were transferred to Constantinople. Gregory of Tours supports the statement that she went to Ephesus.

7. St. Luke certainly does not identify the sinner and Mary of Bethany and Mary of Magdala as one and the same person. St. John, however, clearly identifies Mary of Bethany as the woman who anointed Christ’s feet (see Jn. 12; cf Mt. 26; Mk. 14). Already in Jn. 11:2, Mary is spoken of as “she that anointed the Lord’s feet,” an event that John would later describe in Jn. 12:3-8. On the other hand, apocryphal Gnostic writings glorify Mary Magdalene as the repentant and notorious sinner loved by Jesus but looked down upon as a woman by Peter.

8. French tradition claims that Mary, Lazarus, and other companions went to Marseilles and evangelized the whole of Provence, now southeastern France. She spent the last 30 years of her life in strict penance on a hill, La Sainte-Baume. Here, around 1279, a skull believed to be St. Mary Magdalene’s was found. It is now enshrined in a sarcophagus in the basilica of St. Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume.

9. Tridentine Masses of Mary Magdalene took Lk. 7:36-50, on the anointing of Jesus by a woman known as a sinner, as the Gospel Reading. That has been changed to Jn. 20:1-2, 11-18, on the appearance of the Risen Jesus to Mary Magdalene. In 1969, St. Pope Paul VI removed the identification of Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany and the “sinful woman” from the General Roman Calendar, but the view of her as a former prostitute has persisted in popular culture. Thus, in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, Lady Gaga’s song, “Judas,” and Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ,” and Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code.”

10. Pope Francis elevated the memory of Mary Magdalene from an obligatory memorial to the status of a feast day on 22 July 2016.

11. Prayer — O God, whose only begotten Son entrusted Mary Magdalene before all others with announcing the great joy of the Resurrection, grant, we pray, that through her intercession and example, we may proclaim the living Christ and come to see him reigning in glory, who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

Prayers, best wishes, God bless!