Mary Magdalene is known as the apostolorum apostola (the apostle of the apostles). In 2016, to emphasize her significance, the Church elevated her liturgical commemoration to a feast day, just like most of the Twelve Apostles, instead of an obligatory memorial. In Pope St. John Paul II’s apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem (On the Dignity and Vocation of Women) he gave the reason for St. Mary Magdalene’s honoring title, “she was…the first to bear witness to him before the Apostles” (§16). The first to bear witness to Jesus Christ’s resurrection was not a priest or a bishop, but a lay woman. Mary Magdalene is an excellent example of what being an apostle means for everyone in the Church, particularly the laity.
The word apostle has, what seems to be, two distinct ways it is used in our faith. The most commonly considered understanding of apostles in the Catholic faith could be best described as a hierarchical association. This would refer to the Apostles, primarily the Twelve disciples of Jesus endowed with authority, as well as Matthias and Paul. These sorts of apostles are those whose apostolic activity is connected with their received office in the hierarchical component of the Church. The contemporary inheritors of this understanding of being an apostle are the bishops, the successors of the apostles. In contrast, there is an equally important understanding of apostles that refers to every baptized Christian. In this sense, we are all apostles.
St. Mary Magdalene is the first Christian to bear witness to the full reality of the Gospel. Before the resurrection, the hope of our faith was still unclear. But upon His rising, it was now apparent that faith in Jesus is not vain, but contains the powerful and transformative reality of eternal life even after death. Mary Magdalene is met amid her mourning where her heartache is transformed into her greatest joy which she cannot help but proclaim to the other disciples of Jesus. The word apostle means “one sent on a mission.” This word was true of Mary Magdalene her entire time with Jesus, but, just like all of us, there is that particular moment that seems to capture her mission’s full character. For Jesus told her, “Go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary of Magdala went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and what he told her” (John 20:17-18). Did Mary understand the full depth of Jesus’s words? Probably not, just like how we often don’t fully understand the missions the Lord has for us. Even still, she went and told them what the Lord had revealed to her including her personal experience of Jesus’s resurrected presence.
Jesus chose to have Mary proclaim the Gospel to His disciples before He revealed Himself to them, and often this is what being an apostle means for us. It doesn’t mean we will be the only way that the people in our lives encounter Jesus, but it often means we will be the first step in that encounter. All of us are called to participate in Jesus’s mission of salvation. That is what it means to be the Church in this world. This mission is “not only to bring the message and grace of Christ to all men and women, but also to penetrate and perfect the whole order of temporal things [(meaning every aspect of human life)] with the spirit of the Gospel” (Apostolicum Actuositatem, The Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity §5). The word the Church uses to capture this reality is apostolate. An apostle accompanies the Lord, both in the quiet places of receiving the Father’s love and in the active apostolate of His mission of revealing the Father’s love to the world.
Mary Magdalene was the first to encounter our Lord following His Resurrection, as such, she was given the privilege and the honor of being the first to bring the full thrust of the ‘Good News’ to the rest of His followers. We too might be called to be the first to reveal the Gospel to those in our lives. Not just the hard portion of the “Good News”, that is sin, and its effects on our lives, but the transformative reality the resurrection confirms. In Jesus’s resurrection, we can be sure of the transformation of sin by Jesus’s love into life everlasting. Despite our past, just like Mary Magdalene who Jesus had cast out seven demons (Luke 8:2), the Lord has a mission for us. We often won’t know what it is until it is time to set out on it and it often catches us at an unexpected time (after all Mary was grieving at the tomb!). That is true to form for our Lord. By uniting ourselves to Jesus and embracing in Him the Father’s mission for our lives we too, alongside Mary Magdalene, can be carried by our faith into a way of life we couldn’t have imagined. We call this journey discipleship.
Whether we are being brought out of our past into a future beyond our wildest imaginations (Luke 8:2), beneath the Cross with our Lord in our greatest trials (Mark 15:40-41; John 19:25), grieving our losses (Mark 15:47-16:1), or surprised by joy (Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:4; John 20:2, 11-18) we are sent by the Lord for a mission in this world. In being sent every aspect of our life is transformed by the Gospel and given new meaning and a new ability to penetrate the sorrows of this world and fill them with joy. So let us ask for Mary Magdalene’s intercession as we discern personally in prayer and together in the community of the Church how God is calling us to be sent in every aspect of our lives to bring the message of the Gospel and the grace it contains to our loved ones, places of employment, local community, local culture, and local institutions. May we be given that distinct honor of being the first to bring our faith to light in the unique places our lives touch.
St. Mary Magdalene, pray for us.
Beautiful reflection!