Wednesday is the Feast of Mary Magdalene. It is a day in which we celebrate a woman whose own story is woven into the fabric of Christ’s life and ministry. While some people identify Mary Magdalene with the woman caught in sin in John 8 (the “casting the first stone” story) and with the “sinful woman” who washes Jesus’ feet in Luke 7, neither of those stories explicitly name Mary Magdalene.
I am personally convinced of the identification, and yet even without these parts of Mary’s story it remains one which stands as a picture of the overcoming love of the Gospel.
For even working only with those passages in which Mary Magdalene is called by name, a very moving narrative of redemption takes shape:
Mary Magdalene is named in Luke 8 among the women who had been “healed of evil spirits and infirmities” by Jesus. Luke makes further note that from Mary Magdalene in particular, “seven demons had been cast out”. After her redemption she is among the company who follows Jesus, and is among the women who provide financial support to his ministry.
Mary Magdalene is named again among those at the Crucifixion who remain to the bitter end (Jn. 19). In artistic depictions of the Crucifixion she is typically the one with uncovered hair near to or holding the feet of her Lord.
Mary Magdalene is, finally, among the first of those who early hasten to the tomb of Christ to discover the stone removed and the Body gone. It is Mary Magdalene who alerts the apostles. It is Mary Magdalene who remains at the empty sepulcher weeping (Jn. 20.11), and to whom the angels speak (the first instance of Angelic communication to a daughter of Eve since the Annunciation).
There the Risen Lord appears to Mary, and she becomes the first witness of the Resurrection.
In sum, Mary is a woman who was not only sick and sinful, she was oppressed by darkness and bound in the thrall of evil. Jesus beholds her in her shame and does not leave her there. He brought her from death to life. At the crucifixion, we witness the reciprocation of this love: she beholds her Lord in the shame of the Cross and does not leave him there.
In the book of Genesis there is a garden. It is a place created for life. In it Adam calls Eve by name. Sin and death enter the world in a garden in this garden by this man and woman. A place of life becomes a fountain of death.
At the end of John’s gospel, we are again in a garden. It is a place reserved for the bodies of the dead. In it a “second Adam” calls a daughter of Eve by name: “Jesus said to her, ‘Mary’” (Jn. 20.16). This New Adam proclaims to the woman that sin and death have been defeated. A place of death becomes a fountain of life.
As I wrote for the blog post for last year’s feast, the story of Mary Magdalene “…is the Church’s Story. It is also archetypal of each of our smaller little stories.”
On the day of her feast we gather to feast and celebrate that we have been washed and that our shame has been put away. Not because it never existed, not because we really aren’t as bad as we thought we were, not because ‘sin’ is just a social construct. Rather, we celebrate because something stronger than shame has laid claim to us. Sin has not been excused, it’s been forgiven. For love is stronger than death, and deeper than the grave (cf. Songs 8).
