Among Catholics, Mary Magdalene is known as “the apostle to
the apostles.” The gospel of John tells us why:
Now Mary stood outside
the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw
two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the
other at the foot.
They asked her,
“Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken my
Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she
turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was
Jesus.
He asked her, “Woman,
why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
Thinking he was the
gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have
put him, and I will get him.”
Jesus said to her,
“Mary.”
She turned toward him
and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).
At the place of burial, she recognized the risen Christ in
the word. Two disciples later will recognize him on the road to Emmaus in the
breaking of the bread.
John’s gospel begins at the beginning, in Genesis: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through
Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made.
In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the
darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Mary, the first witness of Jesus’ resurrection, runs to the
other apostles hidden and wrapped in fear and to them she delivers the word of
salvation we all celebrate at Easter: Jesus has been raised up, this time not
on a cross.
“Mary Magdalene went
and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord!’ And she told them what
He had said to her.”
In the gospels, taken as a whole, the Magdalene – the Mary
from Magdala -- is mentioned more often than any of the other apostles. She
was, along with other women, present at the crucifixion and bears the same
place of honor among the women who followed Jesus as does Peter among male
apostles. Mary, we are told, was
possessed of seven evil spirits driven out of her by Jesus. The number seven in
Judaism indicates completion and may indicate here that her spiritual exorcism
was complete. Some scholars believe that the name Magdalene does not derive
from a place name but is instead an honorific that derives from the Hebrew and
Aramaic roots for "tower" or "magnified."
Little is known of Mary Magdalene because, unlike other of
the familiar gospel authors, she left no writings to posterity.
When reading about Mary Magdalene, we must bear in mind that
people, including scholars, make a grave error if they think the Christian
bible is an autobiography of its authors. We speak of the gospel of John, the
gospel of Luke, and so on. But the gospels are in essence neither
autobiographies nor biographies. They are testimonial witnesses – narratives in
which we may glimpse the face of God. It took but a single word from Christ to
Mary to dispel all doubt. At that moment, she became a witness to the truth of
Christian theology. The miracle of resurrection, and all that follows from it, lies
at the very center of Christianity.
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