Homily
for the Feast of
St.
Mary Magdalene
July
22, 2025
Collect
John
20: 1-2, 11-18
Christian
Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.
 |
| St. Mary Magdalene (Jan Van Scorel) |
The Church has long acclaimed Mary of Magdala as the “apostle to the apostles.” The collect strikes that note: our Lord Jesus “entrusted” to her before all others the mission to “announce the great joy of the resurrection.” Her mission began when she—with other holy women, not mentioned in John’s Gospel, altho she reports “we don’t know” (John 20:2) where his body’s gone—went to the tomb and found it empty, and, apparently, the guard gone. John tells us she “ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple” to report (20:2) what she couldn’t fathom. No one was expecting Jesus to rise.
Today’s gospel, as you know,
skipped the passage about Peter and the Beloved Disciple racing to the tomb,
their discovery of the burial cloths, and their not understanding what had
happened, tho the Beloved “saw and believed” (20:8). What he believed, John doesn’t say.
So Mary’s left alone at the
empty tomb. After a brief, inconclusive
exchange with 2 angels, she “turned around and saw Jesus” (20:14). We may interpret that language as an
invitation to turn ourselves around, i.e., to be converted, so that we may see
Jesus. A change in our attitudes is
necessary before we can perceive who he is and what he means for us, as Mary
was converted when Jesus cast 7 demons out of her, according to Luke (8:2).
The other point to note is that
Jesus recognizes Mary before she recognizes him (John 20:16). St. Gregory the Great tells us: “He calls her by name, as tho he were saying:
Recognize me and I recognize you; for I do not know you as I know others; I
know you as yourself.”[1] It’s God who calls each of us uniquely to
himself, God who knows who we are, God who invites our response. Altho he commands Mary not to cling to him
physically (20:17), like her we have to recognize him as our teacher (20:16). He commands us not to call anyone else
“rabbi” or “teacher,” for we have only one teacher, the Messiah (Matt
23:8,10). And then we are to cling to
him, not physically, but religiously, spiritually, and following Mary’s
apostolic lead, to go to his brothers and sisters to announce to them that
Christ our Lord lives (cf. John 20:17-18).
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