Mary Magdalene, Apostle to the Apostles

 

During the third and final session of our recent study on miracles we spent time discussing the Resurrection of Jesus as the great miracle of Christian faith. We looked at the account in John's gospel which focuses on Mary Magdalene as first witness to the resurrected Christ and the first to share this extraordinary news to the other disciples. I hadn't realized that Mary has been described as the "apostle to the apostles' and that in 2016 Pope Francis gave her unique status as such. It would have been meaningful if this had counteracted the declaration of a sixth century pope that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute whose encounter with Jesus reformed her, but that pernicious defamation persists in popular lore. Mary was often portrayed in Renaissance art with flowing red hair, a sign of special status and perhaps wantonness.

Last year I wrote about an upcoming film about Mary Magdalene starring Rooney Mara -- perhaps they should have called it The Girl With the Golden Halo? It was held from release because of the Weinstein scandal, which is ironic.The review I just read by Gareth Higgins in Sojourners says it's somewhat flawed and misses opportunities, yet is thoughtful nonetheless:

She finds her self-rescue in the form of dropping everything to follow Jesus. And it’s not just to follow, but to support him, to be his ally; she sees that his healings, resurrections, preaching to the masses, and the burden of wanting to save people from themselves without misleading them into a retributive revolution come with extraordinary pressures. That’s one of the more intriguing aspects of Mary Magdalene, for Mary both yearns for something more than her mundane life, and sees that it involves participation in liberating the voices and stories and bodies and lives of women — and she is invited into leadership, helping the male apostles consider what they might have missed about the teaching of their master.

Mary Magdalene deserves our respect and even our veneration as the "apostle to the apostles." Perhaps the film will help in that regard, although it is generally "splatted" on Rotten Tomatoes.

We can certainly choose to be mindful of Mary as we hear the story of the Resurrection once again.