This Wednesday we honour St Mary Magdalene, a central figure in the events surrounding the public ministry, passion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and historically the object of very widespread Christian devotion. To mark this feast we reproduce words of Pope St John Paul II, taken from a homily celebrated at Mass in the Jubilee Year of 2000 in the diocese of Aosta in northern Italy (where the Pope had been taking a period of summer rest). St John Paul’s teaching, originally offered to bishops and priests of that region, can apply to all of us, who by sharing in the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection are called – like Mary Magdalen – to be witnesses to others of his saving work:
“We are celebrating the feast of St Mary Magdalen and the liturgy today is marked by a kind of movement, a ‘race’ of the heart and the spirit, motivated by the love of Christ. … Mary Magdalen followed to Calvary the One who had healed her. She was present at Jesus’ crucifixion, death and burial. Together with Mary Most Holy and the beloved disciple, she witnessed his last breath and the silent testimony of his pierced side: she understood that her salvation lay in that death, in that sacrifice. And the Risen One, as today’s Gospel recounts, wished to manifest his glorious body first to the one who had wept profusely at his death. To her he ‘first entrusted … the joyful news of his resurrection’ (Collect), as if to remind us that the shining glory of his resurrection is revealed precisely to those who look with faith and love on the mystery of the Lord’s passion and death. Mary Magdalen thus teaches us that our vocation as apostles is rooted in the personal experience of Christ. Encountering him leads to a new way of living no longer for ourselves, but for him who died and rose for us (cf. 2 Cor. 5: 15), by leaving behind the old man to be conformed ever more completely to Christ, the new Man.”
St John Paul II, Homily at Mass with the Bishop and priests of the Diocese of Aosta, Sunday 22nd July, 2000.