Saint Mary Magdalene

Saint Mary Magdalene takes her name from Magdala, a town on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. The Gospels present her among the women who followed Jesus and provided for him out of their resources. Saint Luke records that seven demons had gone out of her; Saint Mark likewise names her as one from whom the Lord cast out seven demons. Healed and set free, she gave herself wholly to the service of Christ and his companions.

She remained near him in his Passion. The Evangelists place her at the foot of the Cross with the other holy women. She saw where his body was laid in the tomb. Early on the first day of the week she came to the sepulcher and found the stone rolled away. In the account of Saint John she ran to tell Peter and the beloved disciple; remaining alone in the garden, she first mistook the risen Lord for the gardener until he called her by name. She answered "Rabbouni!" and received from him the charge to announce the Resurrection to the apostles. Thus the Church has long called her the Apostle to the Apostles—the first messenger of the empty tomb and of the living Christ.

In the Latin tradition, following the preaching of Pope Saint Gregory the Great, Mary Magdalene was commonly identified with the sinful woman of Luke 7 who washed the Lord's feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair, and anointed them with ointment, and also with Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus who sat at the Lord's feet and later anointed him again before his burial. On this reading her life forms one continuous story of conversion, contemplative love, and steadfast fidelity: the penitent who sought pardon early in the ministry; the disciple freed from seven demons; the sister who chose the better part; the woman who stood by the Cross; and the first witness of Easter morning. The Greek Fathers generally distinguished these figures, and the Eastern Church has always honored Mary Magdalene as a virtuous Myrrhbearer and Equal to the Apostles, distinct from the sinner of Luke 7. The Catholic Church continues to honor her primarily as the first witness of the Resurrection while retaining the traditional Western memory of her penitence and love.

Concerning her later years, the Greek tradition holds that she retired to Ephesus with the Blessed Virgin and there ended her earthly life; her relics were said to have been translated to Constantinople in 886. Gregory of Tours supports the report that she went to Ephesus. A strong French tradition, however, relates that Mary Magdalene, Lazarus, and companions came to Marseilles and evangelized Provence. According to that tradition she withdrew to the solitude of La Sainte-Baume, where she lived a life of penance for thirty years. When her death drew near, angels carried her to Aix into the oratory of Saint Maximinus, where she received the viaticum; her body was laid in an oratory at Villa Lata, later called Saint-Maximin. The chronicler Sigebert records that in 745 the relics were taken to Vézelay for safety from the Saracens. In 1279, when Charles II of Naples founded a Dominican convent at La Sainte-Baume, the shrine was found intact with an inscription explaining why the relics had been hidden. In 1600 they were placed in a sarcophagus given by Pope Clement VIII, the head being kept separately. After the devastation of the Revolution the church was restored in 1814 and the grotto reconsecrated in 1822; the head of the saint has long been venerated there as a center of pilgrimage.

Mary Magdalene's life proclaims the mercy that heals, the love that perseveres beside the Cross, and the joy of announcing the Risen Lord.

May Saint Mary Magdalene obtain for us a share in her penitence and her apostolic courage, that we may cling to Christ and bear witness to his Resurrection today.