Today we celebrate the “Apostle to the Apostles,” the first to announce the Resurrection, the first to see the Risen Lord (unless, of course, the pious tradition of Jesus first going to see His Mother is true). Why is it that Mary Magdalene had such a unique privilege, even above Saint John and Jesus’ closest friends? While John was “the beloved disciple,” perhaps it may be that Mary, more than any of His friends and followers, loved Him most and thus mourned His death more than any other, save for His Mother. In the story of Lazarus, for example, we read that Jesus wept, and those that saw Him remarked, “See how He loved him” (John 11:35-36). In Luke’s Gospel, when Jesus is dining in the house of a Pharisee, a woman weeps at His feet, bathing them with His tears and drying them with her hair. He later says, “I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love” (Luke 7:36-50). Later in the same Gospel we are introduced to a number of Galilean women who follow Jesus, including “Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out” (Luke 8:2). We can only imagine her suffering during that time of being possessed, and her gratitude to Jesus when she was freed.
We cannot know if the weeping woman and Mary are the same, but we can believe that the tears she shed in the garden of the Resurrection come from the great love she had for Jesus, because He had forgiven her so much: “We love,” St. John writes, “because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). That Mary came, alone, at the first possible moment to Jesus’s tomb demonstrates a deep love for Him; as does the fact that she wept at the thought of His body being taken, not ceasing her tears even when the angels asked why she was weeping. So, too, does the fact that the Risen Jesus addresses her as “woman,” which He had done only twice before, both in reference to His Mother, an address first spoken by the gardener of Eden, Adam, in loving reference to the “helpmate” God had fashioned for him (Genesis 2:23). At Cana, as at the Cross, this Jesus who Mary Magdalene thought to be the gardener addresses His Mother as “woman” to denote her new role as the helper suited to Him—the advocate and intercessor, the mother of His beloved disciples—and He now calls Mary Magdalene “woman” because she will soon help Him to spread the Good News, being the very first to herald it. She, too, has become a helper suited to Him, though, unlike Eve, she is not to cling to Him (Genesis 2:24), but rather must be sent forth to His brothers that the work of building the New Eden—the Kingdom of God—may commence. Surely, then, Mary Magdalene was dear to Our Lord; that we celebrate her feast today is the Church’s way of inviting us to let her become dear to us as well.