Today the Church celebrates the Feast of St Mary Magdalene, known as ‘the Apostle of the Apostles’ because she was the first person to whom Jesus appeared after his resurrection. He chose her a woman because she had shown him such deep love. She would tell the other apostles that Jesus had risen from the dead and was alive. In Jewish society, she would have been a witness who was considered unreliable and yet because he chose her, we gather here today. She is a foundation of our faith.

The scriptures tell us only that she is a woman whom Jesus freed from seven demons. We don’t know more details but can imagine that these demons tormented her in painful ways that caused distress and suffering and incapacitated her life. She desired to be free from these demons and the burden she carried. The bible describes the demons as a force of evil which tear apart a life. It is hard to understand. We can however think of people we may know tormented in many different ways; by a pull to evil, by mental illness, by addictions, all of which take away their freedom. They are in our prayers today here at Mass.

Mary Madgalene desired to be free of her burden and she had heard about Jesus who healed and freed people from illness and sickness, from torments and demons. She comes to him. Her restlessness to know God was planted deep within St Mary Magdalene. She grows to understand that freedom and love can only be found in God. As St Augustine tells us from his experience that, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.”

Her desire for Jesus brings her to be healed and he heals her. God’s love for her comes to fullness. St Anselm of Canterbury describes her in the following words, “chosen because you are beloved and beloved because you are chosen of God.” We too are the beloved of God who are chosen. As the first reading tells us, those we see around us are all a new creation in Christ, believed and chosen. The new creation is among us.

As a follower of Jesus, Mary Madgalene comes to wash his feet and anoint them for his suffering. She is like those who will be caring in the St Frai and all those caring for others, whose service is generous and loving, who care for those who are suffering.

After the death of Jesus, it is a pining love that brings Mary Magdalene to the tomb early on the Sunday morning. She cannot get him out of her mind. Her heart is ‘wounded in love’ for her Lord. She wants to be at the tomb just as people who grieve want to come back to the tomb and be alone there. Love brings her to the grave of Jesus, just as it drives us to visit the graves of our loved ones and pray for them. We can imagine that Mary comes and sits on a rock before the tomb bearing her grief and her tears. She is a model of a woman who grieves and reveals the dignity of the compassionate and passion filled woman.

Mary passionately wants to be with Christ and reveals a chaste love for her Master. Our hearts are also wounded in love for God and so they are always restless until they rest in God. The example of Mary Magdalene encourages our waiting in prayer to hear the voice of the Lord.

Mary Magdalene desires to cling onto the Risen Christ but he gives her a new mission. She becomes the first “witness of Divine Mercy” (St Gregory the Great) when the Risen Christ announces to her that he has risen from the dead and that she has been saved. He announces to her the mystery of God’s redemptive plan in the garden of the resurrection and overturns the fall of Adam and Eve that happened in the garden of Paradise. Her tears are turned into Easter joy. She becomes the eye-witness to the Risen Christ. Having received this gift of good news, she is told to go and share it and bear witness to Christ before others: “Go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” So she went and told the apostles “I have seen the Lord”. She becomes an evangelist and is recognised as the “Apostle of Apostles” and becomes a sign of the New Evangelisation in handing on the faith to others and telling them of Jesus Risen from the dead. We are told to go and do the same by our love for others.

Archbishop John Sherrington