Holy Myrrhbearer Mary Magdalene, Equal to the Apostles (I)

The holy Myrrhbearer Mary Magdalene, Equal to the Apostles, was born and grew up in Magdala, a small town on the shore of the lake of Gennesaret between Capernaum and Tiberias. According to church tradition, being beautiful and charming, she lived without restraint in her youth. The Gospel tells us that seven devils dwelt in the future saint (Luke 8:2; Mark 16:9). After Jesus Christ healed the sick Mary, she was set on fire with divine love and became a faithful disciple and follower of the Saviour. Mary Magdalene accompanied the Saviour when He travelled with the apostles through the towns and villages of Judea and Galilee preaching the Gospel. Apparently the Evangelist Luke has her in mind too among the women who followed the Saviour to Golgotha and “bewailed and lamented him” (Luke 23:27). Mary Magdalene stood beside her Teacher together with the Mother of God and the Apostle John even when all His disciples had scattered from Him, crucified and humiliated. The Evangelists also name among those standing by the Cross Mary the mother of the Apostle James the Less, Salome, and other women who had become disciples of Christ in Galilee, but all of them mention Mary Magdalene first (Matt. 27:55–56; Mark 15:40–41; Luke 23:49; John 19:25). This shows clearly how she stood out among the women who accompanied the Saviour. Filled with love and gratitude, Mary went with the other women, fragrant ointments in hand, to pay the last honour to her Teacher’s holy body. Here too Mary was ahead of everyone. “When it was yet dark” she came to the tomb and found “the stone taken away from the sepulchre”; amazed and frightened, she ran to Jesus’s two closest disciples, Simon Peter and John, and told them that the Saviour’s body had vanished. The apostles hastened to the tomb, saw “the linen clothes lie, and the napkin… wrapped together in a place by itself,” were shaken, and went away, but Mary “stood without at the sepulchre weeping.” In tears she looked into the cave once more, wishing to make sure that it really was empty, and then the Lord opened the blessed one’s spiritual eyes: she “seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.” To their question, “Woman, why weepest thou?” Mary answered with the same words she had spoken only a little before to Peter and John: “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.” Then she turned round and “saw Jesus standing,” but did not recognise Him: she thought He was the gardener and said to Him imploringly: “Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.” The Saviour called the grieving woman: “Mary!” Mary recognised her Teacher’s sweetest voice and cried out in rapture: “Rabboni!” (Master!) “and ran to meet Him”; but Christ said to her: “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.”

Stunned and elated with joy, Mary came to herself and ran again to the apostles, who “mourned and wept,” and brought them the good news “that he was alive, and had been seen of her.” This was the first preaching of the Resurrection in this world: the apostles were to bring the good news to the whole world, but she brought it to the apostles themselves…

Holy Scripture tells us nothing of Mary Magdalene’s life after Christ’s Resurrection, but there is no doubt that she who stood at the foot of the Saviour’s Cross in the most grievous hour of the Crucifixion would have been beside Him from the Resurrection to the Ascension as well.

Holy tradition tells that when the apostles, filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit, left Jerusalem and went to the various ends of the earth to preach, Mary Magdalene went to Rome. She travelled through the whole of Italy preaching the Gospel, made her way even to the court of Tiberius Caesar (14–37), and presented him with a red egg as a gift. It is from Mary Magdalene that the tradition of offering eggs dyed red on the feast of Pascha comes. The holy myrrhbearing mother continued her apostolic labour in Italy and in the city of Rome. We may suppose that it is she whom the Apostle Paul has in mind in the Epistle to the Romans when he writes: “Greet Mary, who bestowed much labour on us” (16:6).

Saint Mary commended her soul to the Lord in Ephesus and was buried there. Her incorrupt relics were translated in the ninth century to Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, and laid in the church of the monastery of Saint Lazarus. During the Crusades this holy thing was taken to Italy and buried in Rome, under the altar of the church of Saint John Lateran. Part of the blessed mother’s holy relics rests in France, near Marseille, in a church dedicated to her.