Saint Mary Magdalene

Mary of Magdala is one of the most important figures in the Gospels, and one of those history has wronged the most. In the New Testament she is among the women who follow Jesus from Galilee and support him out of their own means. She is one of the very few people who stay beneath the cross when almost everyone else has fled. And she is the first to find the empty tomb, the first to whom the risen Jesus appears, and the one sent to tell the others. That is why ancient tradition calls her *apostola apostolorum*, the apostle to the apostles. The wrong came later. In 591 Pope Gregory the Great, in a homily, identified her with the unnamed sinful woman who anoints Jesus’ feet in Luke and with Mary of Bethany. They were three different women, and from then on, in the West, they became one: that is where the image of the repentant prostitute comes from, and it isn’t in the texts. The Eastern Churches never made that confusion, and the Catholic Church corrected it in 1969. In 2016 Francis raised her memorial to the rank of a feast, as for the apostles, and gave her a preface of her own. “Magdalene” probably comes from Magdala, the town on Lake Tiberias she must have come from. If your name is Magdalene or Mary, today is your name day.