So I’m a solid week late on this, but better late than never, right?
Ok, more than a week. Anyway...
Most Christians can tell you the story of the first Easter without thinking. Jesus was condemned to death by Pontius Pilate, crucified by Roman soldiers on Friday, put in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea that night, we don’t really know what happened Saturday, then on Sunday He rose from the dead! Alleluia!
Here’s a question for you, though: Who told the rest of the disciples about the resurrection? Was it Peter, the “Rock upon which [Christ] will build [His] church”? John, the “beloved disciple”? Mary, the mother of Jesus? Did the disciples know nothing about it until Christ appeared to them in the upper room?
Answer: Mary Magdalene is the one who shared the news of the resurrection with the rest of the disciples. (If you knew that, cheers to you!)
Feast Day
Last Friday, July 22, was the feast day of St. Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene is one of my favorite women in the Bible, right up there with Anna the prophetess. (If I ever have a daughter, she will be Anna Magdalena… the shared namesake of Anna Magdalena Bach is a happy coincidence.) We Catholics like to celebrate things, and just about every day is a celebration of some person or event. Mary Magdalene’s feast day is shared with eleven other saints. This year, however, she got an upgrade. Pope Francis decreed in June that her feast is now a “major feast”.[1] That doesn’t sound all too exciting to most people who didn’t know she had a feast day to begin with, but it means that her celebration is right up there with the celebrations of the other apostles. She’s not to be looked at as a secondary character in this whole evangelization story; she’s one of the protagonists.
Wasn’t she Jesus’ wife?
Before going any farther, let me clarify that as a Roman Catholic, I am not a follower of the gnostic or apocryphal gospels. We accept the canonical gospels, as do the Protestant denominations of Christianity. The famous gnostic gospels, though still rather mysterious, are basically thought by Christian theologians to be fake. For example, the “Gospel of Thomas” seems to have been written about 100-200 years after Thomas died.[2] They do take some excerpts from the canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), and so certainly contain some things we accept as fact, but also have plenty of, as one author stated, “wacky stuff” that doesn’t come close to aligning with the accepted history of Christ’s life and teachings. Here’s a great example: "Simon Peter said to them, ‘Make Mary leave us, for females don’t deserve life.’ Jesus said, ‘Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven’" (Thomas 114).
Gotta admit, I kinda LOL'ed at that one!
Anyways, I say this because the gnostic gospels imply that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, or at least lovers. I’m not addressing that question here, because I’m not a gnostic. I take the gnostic gospels to be Hollywood-worthy entertainment, but that’s about it. I’m sure they did love one another. But I think the stories of them having a romantic relationship is likely thanks to our society’s preoccupation with sex and the belief that love, especially between man and woman, must be sexualized to be real love. But that’s another story.
Hear Me Roar
In a year that has seen the first nomination of a woman for president of the U.S. by a major party, one might think that our beloved Pope is finally jumping on the bandwagon of female empowerment and ushering this 2,000 year old church into the 21st century. Truth is, the Church isn’t lagging quite like its critics like to insist. This will assuredly be a topic for a future post (perhaps on November 9 of this year) but as a human with 31 years of experience being a female, I will attest that it is our collective society as a whole that treats girls differently than boys, not solely this or that faith group. No, honoring Mary Magdalene is nothing new. St. Mary of Magdala has long been revered in the Christian church, along with the other women of Jesus’ inner circle. What Pope Francis is urging us to remember is what surprisingly few Christians realize: Mary Magdelene was the first person to share the news of Christ’s resurrection with others; not one of the better-known male disciples, not even Jesus’ own mother Mary. “Sharing the good news” of Christ’s resurrection started with this woman, to a group of guys who seemingly had forgotten Christ’s promise that He would rise from the dead.
The First Evangelist
If you don’t know the story I’m speaking of, it’s recorded in Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20. It is the Sunday after Jesus’ crucifixion, which occurred on Friday. When Christ died, several women who had been His followers were there watching and mourning, but could not properly prepare His body for burial because the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday) was beginning, forbidding such work. So, early Sunday morning Mary Magdalene and the other women go to Jesus’ tomb to finally embalm his body. They arrive at the tomb only to discover that it is already open, Jesus is nowhere to be found, and an angel of the Lord tells them that He has risen from the dead. They rush back to tell the other eleven disciples, to mixed reaction.
Here is why Mary of Magdala stands out: she is the one, in all four versions of the story, cited as definitely going to the tomb, and thus was definitely there to receive this message, and to deliver it to the other disciples. The identities of the other women vary in each version. In Matthew’s telling, she was accompanied by “the other Mary”, identified in the previous chapter as “Mary the mother of James and Joseph”[3]. Mark says she went with Salome and Mary the mother of James[4]. Luke says it was Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and several others.[5] John doesn’t mention any women except Mary Magdalene, as if she went alone.[6] Why different versions of the same story? Well, each of the books were written by a different person, each of whom is recounting what he was told by Mary Magdalene and each of whom has something different he deems important enough to emphasize. But all agree that Mary of Magdala was there, and thus was the one to bring the message back to the guys.
Each author also has a different version of how the disciples reacted to the news. Matthew doesn’t really tell us of the group’s reaction. Perhaps this omission is out of embarrassment, as Mark and Luke both say that no one believed her! Luke does tell us that Peter was at least curious, and rushed to the tomb to see it for himself, then “went back home again, wondering what had happened.” Then there’s John. John gives us a bit more detail because he, it seems, was there with Peter when Mary brought the news, and actually went with him to the tomb. Upon hearing this, he and Peter rush to the tomb, only to find it empty. (John goes so far as to clarify that he outran Peter and got there first… I’ve always kind of loved that he included that detail!)[6]
John’s version is also the one that truly sets Mary Magdalene apart. As recorded in John 20:10-18, Peter and John walk back home after seeing the empty tomb. Mary Magdalene, meanwhile, has made her way back to the tomb. Mind you, she was already there early in the morning, then ran back to town to get the disciples, and now has gone back again. She stands outside the empty tomb crying because “They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they have put him.” Suddenly, Jesus is there with her. This is the first time, as recorded in the Bible, that Jesus appears to someone after his resurrection, and it’s Mary Magdalene. He tells her to “find my brothers and tell them that I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.” Mary then rushes to the disciples and tells them “I have seen the Lord!”
Mary Magdalene’s importance should not be understated. As Jesuit Father James Martin said in an interview with Crux, “…Between the time she encountered Christ at the tomb and when she proclaimed his Resurrection to [the disciples], Mary Magdalene was the Church on earth because only she understood the full meaning of Jesus’s ministry.”[7]
Repentant Prostitute?
The reason I personally admire Mary Magdalene is that, from what we are told in scripture, she was apparently quite an independent woman for that time and place, and showed complete devotion to the Lord, going so far as to follow Him along with the other disciples, wash His feet with her hair, stand at the cross while He died, then couldn’t pull herself away from His tomb. Contrary to popular folklore, there really isn’t much evidence that she was a prostitute.
Can I repeat that, please? It is not stated in Scripture that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute.
Mary Magdalene has come to be widely spoken of as a repentant prostitute, and the very word Magdalene has been used to refer to former prostitutes.[8] Why? Well, it’s complicated.
In Luke 8:2-3, we get a little history of Mary Magdalene. As Jesus is touring Galilee and proclaiming the coming of the Kingdom of God, he is accompanied by several women “who were contributing from their private means to the support of Jesus and his disciples.” One of them was “Mary Magdalene, from whom Jesus had cast out seven demons”.[9] So, Mary Magdalene certainly had reason for her deep devotion to Christ (wouldn’t you, if you’d had seven demons cast out?), and apparently had enough wealth to help support His ministry. I once heard a pastor explain that in that time and place, the only way a woman would have had money of her own is if she had been a prostitute. That may have been one way, but certainly not the only one. Way back in Proverbs 31 we read the praises of a wife who helps make money for her household by selling garments to merchants, for example. In the case of M.M., her hometown of Magdala was, during her time, a wealthy city thriving on the fishing business. In fact, archaeologists believe it was the largest urban center on its side of the Sea of Galilee.[10] We are not told specifically how Mary came into money, but to say it must have been from prostitution is conjecture for the sake of a good story. The fact that she is identified as “Mary of Magdala”, in fact, implies that she may have held a prominent role in the city before leaving to follow Christ.
Immediately prior to his introduction of Mary, Luke tells about an unnamed woman washing Jesus’ feet and drying them with her hair. In Luke 7:36-50, we are told that as Jesus dined with some Pharisees, a prostitute comes in. She stands behind him weeping, letting her tears fall onto his feet, before kneeling down to wipe his feet with her hair, kiss them, and anoint them with perfume.[11]
We never learn the identity of this woman. But, because this story is told immediately before the introduction of Mary Magdalene and the other women who accompanied Jesus around Galilee, the two became lumped together and a rumor began that this woman must be Mary Magdalene.
Unfortunately for the reader, there is yet another Mary mentioned in the Gospels. And I’m still not talking about Jesus’ mother. Mary of Bethany is the sister of Lazarus and Martha, and in John 12 we are told that she also anoints Jesus’ feet with perfume, washing them with her hair. This is a different feet-washing than the one Luke told us about. The unnamed woman in Luke’s account came in behind Jesus and stood there weeping as he dined with Pharisees, and is identified only as a prostitute. In John’s story, Jesus is dining with some close personal friends (see the story of him raising Lazarus from the dead) in the city of Bethany at a banquet in his honor, and there his friend Mary anoints his feet.[12] Two different events. Neither one apparently involving Mary Magdalene.
Or do they?
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Mary Magdalene is not confused with the unidentified prostitute. She is widely honored alongside the other apostles.[13] What happened in our western culture? Back in the sixth century, St. Pope Gregory “The Great” gave a homily in Rome in which he stated that Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the repentant prostitute were all the same woman.[14] This likely was not out of animosity towards Mary Magdalene, but to make a statement about Christ’s love and forgiveness to all mankind, regardless of our past. After all, many would argue there is something rather comforting about a woman of ill repute becoming one of Christ’s closest companions and first witness to His resurrection. Since then, Christians in our western culture have continued to lump these women together. Only recently are we seeing Biblical scholars attempting to correct St. Pope Gregory.
Still, it seems like the pope was making a quantum leap with his claim that three distinct women were all the same, doesn’t it? Fr. William Saunders has an informative article for the Arlington Catholic Herald from 2004 that sheds a bit more light on this. The assumption that Mary Magdalene was the same as the unidentified prostitute from Luke 7 stems from the close proximity of the stories of the two women. At the time Luke wrote his Gospel, it would have been unacceptable to make public the previous serious sins of someone who was still living. As Mary Magdalene was likely still alive at the time Luke wrote this, it would have been expected that he did not identify her as a former prostitute, but only gave her name when introducing her as one of Christ’s followers. The connection with Mary of Bethany comes from John’s Gospel. The story of Mary of Bethany washing Christ’s feet comes in John 12. In the chapter before this, John 11, we are introduced to Mary and her siblings Martha and Lazarus, and Mary is described as “the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and dried His feet with her hair.” Mind you, this explanation comes before the story of her anointing his feet at the banquet. It does seem to imply that she could, in fact, be the one who anointed his feet in front of the Pharisees.
So, it is possible that Mary of Bethany and the repentant prostitute are one and the same. And, the close succession of the stories of the repentant prostitute and Mary Magdalene might be interpreted by some to imply they are about the same woman. As I mentioned earlier, this idea has held ever since the days of Gregory the Great, though many scholars today disagree with his synopsis.
In Closing
I find myself believing the scholars who point out that there is no concrete evidence that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. And though that might detract from her story for some people, it makes me love it even more. As Christine Schenck, C.S.J., executive director of FutureChurch points out, to make Mary Magdalene a prostitute “feed[s] into the notion that women are either madonnas or whores.”[15] To accept that Mary Magdalene was neither is to accept that, really, she was probably like most of us. She recognized she needed help, sought it in Christ, and was wholly devoted to Him from then on. As Pope Benedict said in 2006 during a reflection on Mary Magdalene, “A disciple of Christ is one who, in the experience of human weakness, has had the humility to ask for his help, has been healed by him and has set out following closely after him, becoming a witness of the power of his merciful love that is stronger than sin and death.”[16]
In a day and age in which most women were known for being the mother, wife, or sister of a powerful man (notice how most of the other women with her are identified, as I mentioned them earlier), Mary Magdalene was not. She was known by her own identity. She came into wealth and used it to support Christ and His ministry, and when the men of the group had dispersed or were hiding in fear of persecution after Christ’s crucifixion, it was Mary Magdalene that went to the tomb looking for Jesus, then Mary Magdalene that first met Him in his resurrection, and Mary Magdalene that became the “apostle of the apostles” when she brought the good news to the rest of the disciples. This is why she is such a fascinating example for women, and why I’m excited to see her celebrated alongside the other disciples.
[1] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2016/06/pope-gives-mary-magdalene-same-status-as-apostles-in-church-year/
[2] http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/did-the-church-suppress-the-gospel-of-thomas-because-it-was-afraid-of-what-it-contain
[3] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+28&version=NLV
[4] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mark+16&version=NLV
[5] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+24&version=NLV
[6] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+20&version=NLV
[7] https://cruxnow.com/global-church/2016/06/10/new-feast-touts-mary-magdalene-paradigm-women/
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_asylum
[9] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+8&version=NLV
[10] http://www.magdala.org/about/the-story/history/
[11] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+7%3A36-50&version=NLV
[12] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+12&version=NLV
[13] https://oca.org/saints/lives/2009/07/22/102070-myrrhbearer-and-equal-of-the-apostles-mary-magdalene
[14] https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=6091
[15] http://www.uscatholic.org/articles/200806/who-framed-mary-magdalene-27585
[16] http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/angelus/2006/documents/hf_ben-xvi_ang_20060723.html
Ok, more than a week. Anyway...
Most Christians can tell you the story of the first Easter without thinking. Jesus was condemned to death by Pontius Pilate, crucified by Roman soldiers on Friday, put in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea that night, we don’t really know what happened Saturday, then on Sunday He rose from the dead! Alleluia!
Here’s a question for you, though: Who told the rest of the disciples about the resurrection? Was it Peter, the “Rock upon which [Christ] will build [His] church”? John, the “beloved disciple”? Mary, the mother of Jesus? Did the disciples know nothing about it until Christ appeared to them in the upper room?
Answer: Mary Magdalene is the one who shared the news of the resurrection with the rest of the disciples. (If you knew that, cheers to you!)
Feast Day
Last Friday, July 22, was the feast day of St. Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene is one of my favorite women in the Bible, right up there with Anna the prophetess. (If I ever have a daughter, she will be Anna Magdalena… the shared namesake of Anna Magdalena Bach is a happy coincidence.) We Catholics like to celebrate things, and just about every day is a celebration of some person or event. Mary Magdalene’s feast day is shared with eleven other saints. This year, however, she got an upgrade. Pope Francis decreed in June that her feast is now a “major feast”.[1] That doesn’t sound all too exciting to most people who didn’t know she had a feast day to begin with, but it means that her celebration is right up there with the celebrations of the other apostles. She’s not to be looked at as a secondary character in this whole evangelization story; she’s one of the protagonists.
Wasn’t she Jesus’ wife?
Before going any farther, let me clarify that as a Roman Catholic, I am not a follower of the gnostic or apocryphal gospels. We accept the canonical gospels, as do the Protestant denominations of Christianity. The famous gnostic gospels, though still rather mysterious, are basically thought by Christian theologians to be fake. For example, the “Gospel of Thomas” seems to have been written about 100-200 years after Thomas died.[2] They do take some excerpts from the canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), and so certainly contain some things we accept as fact, but also have plenty of, as one author stated, “wacky stuff” that doesn’t come close to aligning with the accepted history of Christ’s life and teachings. Here’s a great example: "Simon Peter said to them, ‘Make Mary leave us, for females don’t deserve life.’ Jesus said, ‘Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven’" (Thomas 114).
Gotta admit, I kinda LOL'ed at that one!
Anyways, I say this because the gnostic gospels imply that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, or at least lovers. I’m not addressing that question here, because I’m not a gnostic. I take the gnostic gospels to be Hollywood-worthy entertainment, but that’s about it. I’m sure they did love one another. But I think the stories of them having a romantic relationship is likely thanks to our society’s preoccupation with sex and the belief that love, especially between man and woman, must be sexualized to be real love. But that’s another story.
Hear Me Roar
In a year that has seen the first nomination of a woman for president of the U.S. by a major party, one might think that our beloved Pope is finally jumping on the bandwagon of female empowerment and ushering this 2,000 year old church into the 21st century. Truth is, the Church isn’t lagging quite like its critics like to insist. This will assuredly be a topic for a future post (perhaps on November 9 of this year) but as a human with 31 years of experience being a female, I will attest that it is our collective society as a whole that treats girls differently than boys, not solely this or that faith group. No, honoring Mary Magdalene is nothing new. St. Mary of Magdala has long been revered in the Christian church, along with the other women of Jesus’ inner circle. What Pope Francis is urging us to remember is what surprisingly few Christians realize: Mary Magdelene was the first person to share the news of Christ’s resurrection with others; not one of the better-known male disciples, not even Jesus’ own mother Mary. “Sharing the good news” of Christ’s resurrection started with this woman, to a group of guys who seemingly had forgotten Christ’s promise that He would rise from the dead.
The First Evangelist
If you don’t know the story I’m speaking of, it’s recorded in Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20. It is the Sunday after Jesus’ crucifixion, which occurred on Friday. When Christ died, several women who had been His followers were there watching and mourning, but could not properly prepare His body for burial because the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday) was beginning, forbidding such work. So, early Sunday morning Mary Magdalene and the other women go to Jesus’ tomb to finally embalm his body. They arrive at the tomb only to discover that it is already open, Jesus is nowhere to be found, and an angel of the Lord tells them that He has risen from the dead. They rush back to tell the other eleven disciples, to mixed reaction.
Here is why Mary of Magdala stands out: she is the one, in all four versions of the story, cited as definitely going to the tomb, and thus was definitely there to receive this message, and to deliver it to the other disciples. The identities of the other women vary in each version. In Matthew’s telling, she was accompanied by “the other Mary”, identified in the previous chapter as “Mary the mother of James and Joseph”[3]. Mark says she went with Salome and Mary the mother of James[4]. Luke says it was Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and several others.[5] John doesn’t mention any women except Mary Magdalene, as if she went alone.[6] Why different versions of the same story? Well, each of the books were written by a different person, each of whom is recounting what he was told by Mary Magdalene and each of whom has something different he deems important enough to emphasize. But all agree that Mary of Magdala was there, and thus was the one to bring the message back to the guys.
Each author also has a different version of how the disciples reacted to the news. Matthew doesn’t really tell us of the group’s reaction. Perhaps this omission is out of embarrassment, as Mark and Luke both say that no one believed her! Luke does tell us that Peter was at least curious, and rushed to the tomb to see it for himself, then “went back home again, wondering what had happened.” Then there’s John. John gives us a bit more detail because he, it seems, was there with Peter when Mary brought the news, and actually went with him to the tomb. Upon hearing this, he and Peter rush to the tomb, only to find it empty. (John goes so far as to clarify that he outran Peter and got there first… I’ve always kind of loved that he included that detail!)[6]
John’s version is also the one that truly sets Mary Magdalene apart. As recorded in John 20:10-18, Peter and John walk back home after seeing the empty tomb. Mary Magdalene, meanwhile, has made her way back to the tomb. Mind you, she was already there early in the morning, then ran back to town to get the disciples, and now has gone back again. She stands outside the empty tomb crying because “They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they have put him.” Suddenly, Jesus is there with her. This is the first time, as recorded in the Bible, that Jesus appears to someone after his resurrection, and it’s Mary Magdalene. He tells her to “find my brothers and tell them that I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.” Mary then rushes to the disciples and tells them “I have seen the Lord!”
Mary Magdalene’s importance should not be understated. As Jesuit Father James Martin said in an interview with Crux, “…Between the time she encountered Christ at the tomb and when she proclaimed his Resurrection to [the disciples], Mary Magdalene was the Church on earth because only she understood the full meaning of Jesus’s ministry.”[7]
Repentant Prostitute?
The reason I personally admire Mary Magdalene is that, from what we are told in scripture, she was apparently quite an independent woman for that time and place, and showed complete devotion to the Lord, going so far as to follow Him along with the other disciples, wash His feet with her hair, stand at the cross while He died, then couldn’t pull herself away from His tomb. Contrary to popular folklore, there really isn’t much evidence that she was a prostitute.
Can I repeat that, please? It is not stated in Scripture that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute.
Mary Magdalene has come to be widely spoken of as a repentant prostitute, and the very word Magdalene has been used to refer to former prostitutes.[8] Why? Well, it’s complicated.
In Luke 8:2-3, we get a little history of Mary Magdalene. As Jesus is touring Galilee and proclaiming the coming of the Kingdom of God, he is accompanied by several women “who were contributing from their private means to the support of Jesus and his disciples.” One of them was “Mary Magdalene, from whom Jesus had cast out seven demons”.[9] So, Mary Magdalene certainly had reason for her deep devotion to Christ (wouldn’t you, if you’d had seven demons cast out?), and apparently had enough wealth to help support His ministry. I once heard a pastor explain that in that time and place, the only way a woman would have had money of her own is if she had been a prostitute. That may have been one way, but certainly not the only one. Way back in Proverbs 31 we read the praises of a wife who helps make money for her household by selling garments to merchants, for example. In the case of M.M., her hometown of Magdala was, during her time, a wealthy city thriving on the fishing business. In fact, archaeologists believe it was the largest urban center on its side of the Sea of Galilee.[10] We are not told specifically how Mary came into money, but to say it must have been from prostitution is conjecture for the sake of a good story. The fact that she is identified as “Mary of Magdala”, in fact, implies that she may have held a prominent role in the city before leaving to follow Christ.
Immediately prior to his introduction of Mary, Luke tells about an unnamed woman washing Jesus’ feet and drying them with her hair. In Luke 7:36-50, we are told that as Jesus dined with some Pharisees, a prostitute comes in. She stands behind him weeping, letting her tears fall onto his feet, before kneeling down to wipe his feet with her hair, kiss them, and anoint them with perfume.[11]
We never learn the identity of this woman. But, because this story is told immediately before the introduction of Mary Magdalene and the other women who accompanied Jesus around Galilee, the two became lumped together and a rumor began that this woman must be Mary Magdalene.
Unfortunately for the reader, there is yet another Mary mentioned in the Gospels. And I’m still not talking about Jesus’ mother. Mary of Bethany is the sister of Lazarus and Martha, and in John 12 we are told that she also anoints Jesus’ feet with perfume, washing them with her hair. This is a different feet-washing than the one Luke told us about. The unnamed woman in Luke’s account came in behind Jesus and stood there weeping as he dined with Pharisees, and is identified only as a prostitute. In John’s story, Jesus is dining with some close personal friends (see the story of him raising Lazarus from the dead) in the city of Bethany at a banquet in his honor, and there his friend Mary anoints his feet.[12] Two different events. Neither one apparently involving Mary Magdalene.
Or do they?
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Mary Magdalene is not confused with the unidentified prostitute. She is widely honored alongside the other apostles.[13] What happened in our western culture? Back in the sixth century, St. Pope Gregory “The Great” gave a homily in Rome in which he stated that Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the repentant prostitute were all the same woman.[14] This likely was not out of animosity towards Mary Magdalene, but to make a statement about Christ’s love and forgiveness to all mankind, regardless of our past. After all, many would argue there is something rather comforting about a woman of ill repute becoming one of Christ’s closest companions and first witness to His resurrection. Since then, Christians in our western culture have continued to lump these women together. Only recently are we seeing Biblical scholars attempting to correct St. Pope Gregory.
Still, it seems like the pope was making a quantum leap with his claim that three distinct women were all the same, doesn’t it? Fr. William Saunders has an informative article for the Arlington Catholic Herald from 2004 that sheds a bit more light on this. The assumption that Mary Magdalene was the same as the unidentified prostitute from Luke 7 stems from the close proximity of the stories of the two women. At the time Luke wrote his Gospel, it would have been unacceptable to make public the previous serious sins of someone who was still living. As Mary Magdalene was likely still alive at the time Luke wrote this, it would have been expected that he did not identify her as a former prostitute, but only gave her name when introducing her as one of Christ’s followers. The connection with Mary of Bethany comes from John’s Gospel. The story of Mary of Bethany washing Christ’s feet comes in John 12. In the chapter before this, John 11, we are introduced to Mary and her siblings Martha and Lazarus, and Mary is described as “the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and dried His feet with her hair.” Mind you, this explanation comes before the story of her anointing his feet at the banquet. It does seem to imply that she could, in fact, be the one who anointed his feet in front of the Pharisees.
So, it is possible that Mary of Bethany and the repentant prostitute are one and the same. And, the close succession of the stories of the repentant prostitute and Mary Magdalene might be interpreted by some to imply they are about the same woman. As I mentioned earlier, this idea has held ever since the days of Gregory the Great, though many scholars today disagree with his synopsis.
In Closing
I find myself believing the scholars who point out that there is no concrete evidence that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. And though that might detract from her story for some people, it makes me love it even more. As Christine Schenck, C.S.J., executive director of FutureChurch points out, to make Mary Magdalene a prostitute “feed[s] into the notion that women are either madonnas or whores.”[15] To accept that Mary Magdalene was neither is to accept that, really, she was probably like most of us. She recognized she needed help, sought it in Christ, and was wholly devoted to Him from then on. As Pope Benedict said in 2006 during a reflection on Mary Magdalene, “A disciple of Christ is one who, in the experience of human weakness, has had the humility to ask for his help, has been healed by him and has set out following closely after him, becoming a witness of the power of his merciful love that is stronger than sin and death.”[16]
In a day and age in which most women were known for being the mother, wife, or sister of a powerful man (notice how most of the other women with her are identified, as I mentioned them earlier), Mary Magdalene was not. She was known by her own identity. She came into wealth and used it to support Christ and His ministry, and when the men of the group had dispersed or were hiding in fear of persecution after Christ’s crucifixion, it was Mary Magdalene that went to the tomb looking for Jesus, then Mary Magdalene that first met Him in his resurrection, and Mary Magdalene that became the “apostle of the apostles” when she brought the good news to the rest of the disciples. This is why she is such a fascinating example for women, and why I’m excited to see her celebrated alongside the other disciples.
[1] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2016/06/pope-gives-mary-magdalene-same-status-as-apostles-in-church-year/
[2] http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/did-the-church-suppress-the-gospel-of-thomas-because-it-was-afraid-of-what-it-contain
[3] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+28&version=NLV
[4] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mark+16&version=NLV
[5] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+24&version=NLV
[6] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+20&version=NLV
[7] https://cruxnow.com/global-church/2016/06/10/new-feast-touts-mary-magdalene-paradigm-women/
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_asylum
[9] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+8&version=NLV
[10] http://www.magdala.org/about/the-story/history/
[11] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+7%3A36-50&version=NLV
[12] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+12&version=NLV
[13] https://oca.org/saints/lives/2009/07/22/102070-myrrhbearer-and-equal-of-the-apostles-mary-magdalene
[14] https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=6091
[15] http://www.uscatholic.org/articles/200806/who-framed-mary-magdalene-27585
[16] http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/angelus/2006/documents/hf_ben-xvi_ang_20060723.html