Saint Mary Magdalene

Mary was from Magdala, a fishing town on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. Luke tells us that Jesus had cast seven devils out of her, and that she was one of the women who followed him and “ministered unto him of their substance” (Luke 8).

When most of the disciples fled, she stayed. She stood near the cross with the Mother of Jesus, watched where he was buried, and before dawn on the first day of the week she came to the tomb and found it empty. She stayed there weeping after the others had gone home. A man she took for the gardener asked her why she was weeping, and then he said her name: “Mary.” She turned and answered, “Rabboni,” Master. The risen Christ sent her to tell the Apostles, and she went to them saying, “I have seen the Lord” (John 20). For this the Fathers of the Church called her “the apostle to the Apostles.” In 2016 Pope Francis raised her memorial to a feast, the same rank as the feasts of the Apostles.

In the West, from the time of Gregory the Great, she was identified with the sinful woman who anointed the feet of Jesus in Luke 7, and with Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. The Eastern Churches have always honoured these as different women. Either way she became the great model of repentance and of love for Christ.

A medieval tradition says she ended her life in Provence, in the south of France, living in prayer in a cave at Sainte-Baume. Pilgrims still go there to honour her.