Saint Mary Magdalene

Saint Mary Magdalene was a disciple of Jesus. She accompanied him in Galilee, stood beneath his cross, and on Easter morning she was the first to see the Risen One and to bring the news to the apostles. For this reason she is called the apostle of the apostles. The Church celebrates her feast on July 22.

What is known about her comes from the Gospels, which give neither her age nor her family background. Her byname links her with Magdala, a town on the Sea of Galilee. Saint Luke names her among the women who, together with the Twelve, followed Jesus through towns and villages and supported them out of their own means, and he notes that seven demons had gone out of her. Saint Mark adds that it was Jesus who had cast them out.

When Jesus was dying on the cross, Mary Magdalene was there with other women; the Gospel of John names her next to the Mother of Jesus. She saw where his body was laid, and after the Sabbath, together with other women, she bought spices to anoint it.

According to the Gospel of John, she came to the tomb early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been removed. She ran to Simon Peter and the other disciple, and later she stood weeping at the tomb. Then she saw Jesus, but she did not recognize him and took him for the gardener. She recognized him only when he called her by name, and she answered: “Rabbouni,” which means “Teacher.” Jesus sent her to his brothers, and she went to the disciples and announced: “I have seen the Lord.”

Rabanus Maurus and Saint Thomas Aquinas called her the apostle of the apostles, because she announced to the apostles what they in turn would proclaim to the whole world. Saint John Paul II recalled that she was the first eyewitness of the Risen Christ and for this reason was also the first to bear witness to him before the apostles. Pope Francis called her the apostle of the new and greatest hope.

In the West, especially from the time of Pope Saint Gregory the Great, she was identified with the woman who poured perfume on Jesus in the house of Simon the Pharisee, and with Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. This view influenced church writers, art, and liturgical texts. The studies of the Bollandists, however, prepared the reform of the calendar: the renewed liturgical books speak of Mary of Magdala, and the Church honors Mary of Bethany on July 29 together with Martha and Lazarus.

The Gospels say nothing about the rest of her life. According to Eastern tradition she settled in Ephesus and died there, and according to a later Western tradition she came to Provence and lived for many years in solitude in the grotto of La Sainte-Baume. The Church in the East and in the West has always honored her as the first witness of the resurrection. In 2016 Pope Francis raised her memorial to the rank of a feast, the rank held by the feasts of the apostles, and a proper preface on the apostle of the apostles was added to the Missal.