Saint Mary Magdalene

Our saint of the week is Saint Mary Magdalene (Feast Day July 22). We know much about her because of Sacred Scripture: she was one of several holy women who followed Jesus throughout His ministry: she was the one from whom Jesus cast out seven demons (Mk 16:9); she was one of the women at the foot of the Cross when Jesus was crucified and died, though all of the Apostles had fled in fear; she helped bury His body and, after the Sabbath, on Easter morning, returned to the tomb only to find it empty. It was on discovering the empty tomb that she went to the Apostles to share the strange news of His missing body, and as we read in Sacred Scripture, Saints Peter and John ran to the empty tomb to confirm her story with their own eyes. Because of this, the Church has long given her the title “apostle to the Apostles,” for she had gone to the Apostles to deliver the Good News of the Resurrection, which the Apostles would themselves do in turn.
What is especially compelling with Saint Mary Magdalene is that what rested solely on her eyewitness testimony of the empty tomb was the beginning of the newborn Church’s mission of evangelization, and we must be mindful of the magnitude of this because it was a time and place in world history that discredited the testimony of all women simply because they were women. And yet Jesus entrusted these first seeds of evangelization to a woman, knowing full well that the world would possibly not believe her. In this one figure, Saint Mary Magdalene, we celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection, the Church’s supreme mission of evangelization, and the dignity and importance of women in our lives which both the Lord and His Church emphasize and celebrate. Saint Mary Magdalene . . . Pray for us!