António dos Santos (*)
Yesterday, July 22, the Church celebrated the liturgical feast of St. Mary Magdalene. The desire to place her on the liturgical calendar was born in the heart of Pope Francis and was made official in 2016. St Thomas Aquinas called her apostolorum apostola – “apostle of the apostles.”
Mary Magdalene, was born in the fishing village of Magdala located on the western shores of Lake Tiberias. Luke the evangelist talks about her and mentions that seven demons were expelled from her (cf Luke 8:3).
Fr Gonçalo Portocarrero de Almada, in one of his articles in the Observador, emphasizes that the most difficult question is to find out who, in fact, was Mary Magdalene. In the past, says the priest, “there were those who identified her with the sinner who poured the perfume in the house of Simon the Pharisee; but modern exegesis belies this identification. Perhaps this confusion gave rise to the bad reputation that has plagued this saint ever since. Indeed, popular tradition imputes to her a luxurious past, which the Bible, however, does not corroborate.”
Fr Portocarrero affirms that, more important than investigating the more or less sinful past of Mary Magdalene, her virtue, her love for Christ matters more, because she too, like all of us, could only be forgiven in love, as Jesus taught the Pharisaic Simon (cf Luke 7:47).
WITNESS TO DEATH AND RESURRECTION
Mary Magdalene also appears in the Gospels at the most terrible and dramatic moment in Jesus’ life: when she accompanied the Lord to Calvary, with other women, and contemplated Him from afar. She also appears when Joseph of Arimathea places Jesus’ body in the tomb, which had been closed with a stone. It was Mary Magdalene, after Saturday, on the morning of the first day of the week, who returned to the tomb and found that the stone had been removed, and ran to warn Peter and John; they, in turn, rushed to the tomb and saw that the Lord’s body was no longer there.
As the two disciples returned home, Jesus appeared to her, but she thought He was the gardener. Only when Jesus called her by her name: “Mary!” that she recognized him and said: “Rab-boni!” which in Hebrew means “Master!” Then she immediately went to announce to the disciples: “I have seen the Lord!” (cf John 20).
The famous hagiographer Butler in his work Life of the Saints, tells us that according to Eastern tradition, Mary Magdalene, after Pentecost, accompanied Our Lady and St John the Evangelist to Ephesus, where she died and was buried.
St Mary Magdalene, pray for us!
(Image: Christ’s Appearance to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection, Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov (1806 – 1858).
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