The Life
Mary Magdalene is one of the most beloved saints in the Bible. The Lord had cast seven demons out of her, and from that moment she followed him everywhere. She stood at the foot of the Cross when nearly all the disciples had run away. She came to the tomb at dawn on Pascha morning. The Lord himself appeared to her in the garden, called her by name, and sent her to tell the Apostles. She is the very first person who ever spoke the words: I have seen the Lord. Two thousand years later, every Orthodox Christian who proclaims "Christ is risen" is doing what Mary Magdalene did first.
Mary came from a little town called Magdala, on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, between Capernaum and Tiberias. The town is still there — the small village of Mejhdel stands on the same spot. Tradition tells us that as a young woman Mary was beautiful and led a sinful life. The Gospel says simply that the Lord cast seven demons out of her. From the moment of her healing she was a different person. She left her old life behind and followed him everywhere.
Once the Lord had healed her, Mary did not leave his side. The Gospel says she followed after the Lord as he and the Apostles went through the cities and villages of Galilee and Judea preaching about the Kingdom of God. She and several other women — Joanna, Susanna, and others — supported the whole little community out of their own money. They cooked, they cared for the sick, they made the long road possible. Mary was at the heart of this group of faithful women that history almost forgot but the Gospel itself remembers.
When they came to arrest the Lord in the garden, the disciples ran. When he was scourged and condemned, they hid. When he carried his Cross up the hill of Golgotha, almost all of them had vanished. But Mary Magdalene was there. She stood at the foot of the Cross with the Mother of God and the beloved disciple John. She saw it all. She watched him die. She watched Joseph and Nicodemus take his body down. She watched as they rolled the stone in front of the tomb, sealing the Source of Life inside. She would not leave him.
The Sabbath ended at sundown on Saturday. By dawn on Sunday Mary was already running to the tomb. The Gospel of John says she came while it was still dark. She found the stone rolled away. She ran to tell Peter and John. They came, looked in, saw the empty cloths, and went home. Mary stayed. She was weeping. She bent down and looked into the tomb, and saw two angels in white. They asked her: woman, why are you weeping? She turned around — and there was a man she thought was the gardener. He said to her: Mary. And she knew. It was the Lord. She fell at his feet. He told her: do not cling to me, but go and tell my brethren. So she went.
Mary did not stay quiet after that morning. Tradition tells us she traveled all the way to Rome, walked into the imperial palace, presented herself to the Emperor Tiberius himself, gave him a red egg, and said: Christ is risen. She told him about the just man who had been crucified in Judea by the high priests with Pontius Pilate’s permission, and about the Resurrection. The Orthodox custom of dying eggs red at Pascha and giving them to one another comes from this moment. The egg is the icon of the tomb — sealed but full of life. The red is the blood of Christ. Mary started a tradition that has continued for two thousand years.
When Mary ran back from the garden to the upper room where the Apostles were hiding, she said to them: I have seen the Lord. Those five words are the beginning of all Christian preaching. Every Sunday Liturgy, every catechism class, every missionary in every land, is in some way an extension of those five words. The Apostles preached because Mary preached first. The Gospels say so. We forget this sometimes, but the Church has never forgotten.
Five words. The first Christian sermon. The first time anyone in the world ever proclaimed the Resurrection. Every "Christ is risen" at every Pascha for the next two thousand years has been a continuation of Mary’s five words.
The whole Resurrection is in this exchange. He says her name. She recognizes him. That is the entire pattern of the Christian life. The Lord knows our names. He calls each of us. When we hear the call, we recognize him.
After her years of preaching in Italy and Rome, Mary moved at the end of her life to Ephesus, where the Apostle John was. She had stood at the foot of the Cross with him; she would die in the same city where he eventually fell asleep. She was buried at Ephesus. In the ninth century her relics were brought to Constantinople and laid in the Church of Saint Lazarus. Some of her relics are at the great cathedral in Provence in France, where pilgrims have visited her shrine for centuries. The Lord glorified her body just as he had glorified her soul.
Mary Magdalene matters to every Orthodox Christian because she shows us what it looks like to love the Lord with absolutely everything. He had given her her life back. She gave him the rest of it. She did not run away when it got hard. She came to the tomb in the dark. She is the patroness of every person who has ever been delivered from something and wants to give the rest of his life back to the Lord who saved him. Her name is in the Bible because the Lord wanted her name there. Two thousand years later we still call on her, and she is still loving us.