John 20:11-18There may be no women treated worse by history than Mary Magdalene. For more than a millennia, she was wrongly identified as an adulteress and prostitute. Now in our time, her image continues to be sexualized as books like the DaVinci Code try to dress her up as Jesus’s wife. Lost in all this is the power of her witness to Jesus, crucified and risen.
Around 600 AD, Pope Gregory the Great conflated 2 stories close together in Luke’s Gospel: 1) Jesus’s forgiveness of the sinful woman who anointed his feet with her tears, and 2)the mention of Mary Magdalene being healed of seven demons by Jesus, then becoming one of his women followers. Thus was born Mary Magdalene, the repentant prostitute. This image was reinforced by centuries of painters who could get away with painting nude women by naming the subject Mary. But in the Eastern Orthodox Church, this conflation never happened, and that ancient church has never seen Mary in that way. In fact, Orthodox Christians hold her as equal to the 12 Apostles.
The truth is that there may have been no disciple more faithful to Jesus, in death and life. When all the men who Jesus had chosen as his apostles had abandoned him (save the beloved disciple), Mary Magdalene did not. She accompanied him to his cross, and did not turn away from the stomach-turning sight of Jesus nailed to that cross, and dying a horrible death. While the rest of the disciples were wallowing in their grief, it was Mary Magdalene who led some other women to Jesus’s tomb. And it was to Mary Magdalene that the risen Christ first appeared. And it was Mark Magdalene who was sent to the rest of Jesus’s disciples, as the “Apostle to the apostles,” to proclaim the greatest news of all time.
Mary Magdalene was faithful to her Lord in good and bad. Pray for us, Mary that we may be faithful to Christ’s people in good or bad.
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