The Great Love of Mary Magdalen

Mary Magdalen is one of the great women of the Gospels. She appears so vividly, as one who loved much, who loved with the singularity and passion that expresses the mystery of being a woman. She was a “great sinner” whose passion misled her into prostitution — into being a slave to the superficial urges of the men who bought her and abused her. Yet something within her cried out in agony for real love.

Then she met Jesus. Her desire for human love was transformed into a “passionate chastity” beyond the world’s understanding. She devoted the whole energy of her womanhood to the transcendent singularity of following Him through all the depths of the drama of salvation, through the suffering and death, the loss, the burial in the tomb, and the returning to the tomb with an unknown hope. She found in Jesus not only the healing and strength to live in the fullness of her dignity as a woman, in real bodily chastity abundant in supernatural fruitfulness. She also became a witness to the Resurrection — the beginning of the New Creation — and was made the first herald of the victory of Jesus over sin and death.

“[Jesus] appeared in the garden and revealed himself to Mary Magdalene, who had loved him in life, witnessed him dying on the Cross, sought him as he lay in the tomb, and was the first to adore him, newly risen from the dead. He honored her with the office of being an apostle to the Apostles, so that the good news of new life might reach the ends of the earth” (from the Preface for the Feast of Saint Mary Magdalen).