Session 4: "Apostle to the Apostles" — Mary Magdalene and the Witness of Encounter

Session 4 — St. Mary Magdalene

"Apostle to the Apostles" — Mary Magdalene and the Witness of Encounter

Opening Prayer

LEADER: Let us begin by asking the Holy Spirit to be with us tonight.

ALL: Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in us the fire of your love.

LEADER: Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created.

ALL: And you shall renew the face of the earth.

LEADER: O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit did instruct the hearts of the faithful,

ALL: Grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever rejoice in His consolation, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

LEADER: Tonight we sit with the first witness of the Resurrection. We pray with her own words, the first words spoken by anyone who has ever met the Risen Christ:

LEADER: Rabboni — my Teacher.

ALL: I have seen the Lord.

LEADER: Lord, give us tonight the eyes of St. Mary Magdalene — eyes that recognize you when you speak our name, and a tongue that cannot help but tell what it has seen.

ALL: St. Mary Magdalene, pray for us. Amen.

Scripture Assignments

Assign each passage to a woman in the group before beginning.

Passage 1: Luke 8:1-3
Passage 2: Mark 16:9
Passage 3: John 20:1-2
Passage 4: John 20:11-18

Who Was This Woman?

Before we can say anything true about St. Mary Magdalene, we have to clear something out of the way — because the Mary Magdalene most Catholic women have been handed is not the Mary Magdalene of the Gospels. She is a composite figure invented in the sixth century and faithfully transmitted for the next fourteen hundred years.

Here is the truth.

St. Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute. Not once, in any Gospel, in any letter, in any record of the early Church, is she ever called one. The idea that she was comes from a single homily preached by Pope St. Gregory the Great in the year 591, in which he conflated three different women in the Gospels — Mary of Magdala, Mary of Bethany (Lazarus's sister), and the anonymous "sinful woman" who anointed Jesus's feet in Luke 7 — into one composite figure, and assigned that figure a backstory of sexual sin that Scripture nowhere supports.

The conflation stuck. For most of the second millennium of Christian history, Western Catholic art, preaching, and devotion treated St. Mary Magdalene as a reformed prostitute. The Eastern Church never made this mistake — Greek and Russian Orthodox tradition has always honored her as Equal to the Apostles, with no prostitute legend attached. In 1969, the Roman Catholic Church formally corrected the conflation in its liturgical calendar; St. Mary of Bethany now has her own feast day, the "sinful woman" of Luke 7 is treated as anonymous, and St. Mary Magdalene is recognized as her own person. In 2016, Pope Francis elevated her memorial to a full feast — the same rank given to the apostles — and gave her, in the Roman Missal, the title the Eastern Church has used for centuries: Apostola Apostolorum. The Apostle to the Apostles.

Most Catholic women in the pews have never been told any of this. The medieval painting still hangs in their imagination. We have to take it down before we can see her.

Who was she, then?

She was a woman from Magdala, a fishing village on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. We do not know her age, her family, or her circumstances before she met Jesus. We know one thing about her past, and Scripture states it plainly: Jesus had cast seven demons out of her. That is the only thing the Gospels say about who she was before. Seven demons — a number suggesting either a literal sevenfold possession or, in Hebrew idiom, a completeness of demonic oppression. Whatever was wrong with her was very wrong. Whatever Jesus did for her, He did completely.

After her healing, she stayed with Him. Luke tells us she was part of a group of women who traveled with Jesus and the Twelve through the towns and villages of Galilee, providing for them out of their own means. She is one of the named patronesses of the public ministry — a woman of independent means, evidently, who used what she had to support the mission of Christ. She is at the Cross when most of the apostles have fled. She is at the burial. She is at the tomb on Easter morning. And she is the first human being on earth to see the Risen Christ.

The composite Magdalene of medieval imagination was a fascinating woman, but she was a fiction. The Mary Magdalene of the Gospels is, in some ways, far more interesting. She is a woman delivered from real evil, who responded to her deliverance by giving the rest of her life — and her resources — to the one who delivered her, and who was rewarded by becoming the first apostle of the Resurrection.

That is the woman we are sitting with tonight.

Teaching Block 1 — The Women Who Made the Ministry Possible

Most people who have read the Gospels their whole lives have never noticed the three verses we are about to read. They are in Luke, between the parable of the sower and the calming of the storm, and they are easy to miss. But they change the way you see the public ministry of Christ.

And it happened afterwards that he was making a journey through the cities and towns, preaching and evangelizing the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, along with certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, who is called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had departed, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many other women, who were ministering to him from their resources.
Luke 8:1-3 — CPDV

Read it again. Jesus went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with Him, and also some women... who provided for them out of their means.

There is a small but important word there: also. Luke is telling us that the public ministry of Jesus did not consist only of Jesus and the Twelve. There was a second circle — a group of women, named here, who traveled with the band, supported it financially, and were part of the daily life of the mission. St. Mary Magdalene is named first in that list. Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward Chuza, is named second; she would have been a woman of significant means, married into the household of a regional ruler. Susanna and many others round out the list. They provided for them out of their means.

Without these women, there is no public ministry. The mission of Jesus moved through Galilee for three years, eating and sleeping and traveling, and someone had to pay for it. Someone had to cook. Someone had to handle the logistics that turned a wandering preacher into a working movement. Luke is telling us that those someones were women — women named, women specific, women who used their resources and their hands and their daily labor to make the Gospel possible.

The Church has not always emphasized this. Centuries of Christian preaching have treated the women in the Gospel narratives as background — present, faithful, but not really part of the work. Luke does not see it that way. Luke names them. Luke puts them in the same sentence as the Twelve. Luke wants us to know that the apostolic mission, from the beginning, was carried forward by women whose contribution was not symbolic but actual.

This matters for two reasons. First, because it tells us the truth about how the Kingdom of God advances — not only through the named officeholders, but through the unnamed, often unheralded labor of those who give what they have so that what God is doing can continue. Second, because it gives us a frame for how to see our own contributions. The woman in your parish who runs the Bible study coffee table, the mother who shapes the souls of three children in the hidden work of a home, the widow whose small donation keeps the parish soup kitchen open — these women are not on the sidelines of the Kingdom. They are St. Mary Magdalene's sisters. The work of Christ has always moved through women whose names are mostly forgotten by history but are written in heaven.

Discussion Question 1: Luke names the women who funded and sustained the public ministry of Jesus — and most Catholic women have read those verses dozens of times without seeing them. Where in your own life are you doing real Kingdom work that goes mostly unnoticed by others? Have you ever quietly resented that the work is hidden, or have you been able to see your work the way Luke saw the work of these women — as essential, named, and seen by God?

Teaching Block 2 — The Garden and the Calling of Her Name

Now we come to the morning that changed everything — for her and for the world.

Then on the first Sabbath, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and she saw that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb. Therefore, she ran and went to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and she said to them, "They have taken the Lord away from the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him."
John 20:1-2 — CPDV

St. Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb while it is still dark. She is alone in John's account — though the other Gospels mention other women with her, John focuses on her, because John is telling a story that depends on her. She finds the stone rolled away. She runs back to tell Peter and the beloved disciple. Peter and John race to the tomb, see the linen cloths, and go back home — because, John tells us with a touch of honesty, as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that He must rise from the dead.

The men go home. The woman stays.

But Mary was standing outside the tomb, weeping. Then, while she was weeping, she bowed down and gazed into the tomb. And she saw two Angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been placed, one at the head, and one at the feet. They say to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have placed him." When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her: "Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you seeking?" Considering that it was the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have moved him, tell me where you have placed him, and I will take him away." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" And turning, she said to him, "Rabboni!" (which means, Teacher). Jesus said to her: "Do not touch me. For I have not yet ascended to my Father. But go to my brothers and tell them: 'I am ascending to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God.' " Mary Magdalene went, announcing to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord, and these are the things that he said to me."
John 20:11-18 — CPDV

Read this scene slowly. It is one of the most personal moments in all of Scripture.

She is weeping outside the tomb. Two angels are sitting where the body had been, one at the head and one at the feet — and they speak to her with such ordinary tenderness, as if to a neighbor whose grief is greater than she can carry: Woman, why are you weeping? And then she turns, and there is a man behind her, and she does not recognize Him. She thinks He is the gardener.

This is the moment. The Risen Christ — the first human being ever to be seen alive after death, the firstborn of all creation, the conqueror of the grave — appears, and the first eyes that see Him do not recognize Him. He has to call her by name. Mary. And in that one word, in the particular sound of her own name spoken in the particular voice of the One who had cast seven demons out of her, she knows.

Rabboni — my Teacher. My Teacher. The pronoun is the whole sermon.

This is what the Catholic tradition has called the encounter. Not a doctrine grasped from a distance, not a theology learned in a classroom, but a personal meeting in which Christ speaks your name and you, alone in your grief or your darkness, recognize Him. St. Mary Magdalene's faith is not the faith of someone who was argued into believing. It is the faith of someone who was met. She had spent three years following Him; she had stood at His Cross; she had watched His body laid in a tomb. And then, in the garden, He said her name, and everything changed.

The Church has always understood that this is how faith actually works — for most of us, most of the time. We are not converted by syllogisms. We are converted by the moment when, in our own grief or our own emptiness, Someone calls us by name. St. Mary Magdalene is the patroness of every Catholic who has ever had that moment, and the witness to every Catholic who is still waiting for it.

And there is one more detail that you must not miss. The Risen Christ, in the first moments of His new and glorified life, makes a choice. He could have appeared first to Peter. He could have appeared first to His mother. He could have appeared first to the high priest or to Pilate or to anyone whose witness would have been instantly credible in the world of the first century. He appears first to a woman. To this woman. To a woman whose testimony, in Roman and Jewish courts, would have been considered legally invalid. He chose her anyway. He gave her the news of the Resurrection first, before any apostle, before any man — and He told her to go and tell.

That is the moment St. Mary Magdalene became the Apostle to the Apostles.

Discussion Question 2: The Risen Christ chose to appear first to a woman whose testimony would not even have been admissible in court — and He sent her to tell the apostles what she had seen. He did this on purpose. What does it tell you about how God sees the witness of women in the Church, and where in your own life have you felt that your voice or your testimony did not count? What changes when you remember that the Lord of the Resurrection deliberately gave the news to a woman first?

Teaching Block 3 — "Go and Tell" — The Witness of Encounter

Read the final verse of the garden scene one more time:

"Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, 'I have seen the Lord' — and that He had said these things to her."

This is the first apostolic proclamation of the Resurrection. I have seen the Lord. Not I have studied the Lord, not I have a theory about the Lord, not I have a sophisticated theological argument for the Lord. I have seen. This is testimony in the most basic and most powerful sense — the report of an eyewitness who has met the living Christ and cannot keep silent about it.

The Church has used a specific Latin term for what St. Mary Magdalene became in that moment: Apostola Apostolorum — the Apostle to the Apostles. The word apostle in Greek means one who is sent. The Twelve are sent by Christ to the world. St. Mary Magdalene is sent by Christ to the Twelve. She is, in the strictest sense, an apostle to the apostles themselves — the first to be commissioned to carry the news of the Resurrection to anyone, and the one through whom the Twelve themselves first heard it.

This is what the Church calls the witness of encounter, and it is the form of evangelization most available to most Christians, and especially to most Catholic women. Most of us will not preach from a pulpit. Most of us will not write the next great work of apologetics. Most of us will not stand on a stage and explain the faith to a crowd. But every one of us can do what St. Mary Magdalene did. Every one of us can say, to one person, in our own words: I have seen the Lord. I have met Him. He spoke my name in the place where I was dying, and I am not dead anymore. That is what makes a Christian woman dangerous to the kingdom of darkness. Not her credentials. Not her platform. Her encounter, and her willingness to speak of it.

There is a great Catholic tradition — older than the Reformation, older than the medieval polemics, older than every fight about women and ministry — that the Resurrection of Christ first entered the world through the mouth of a woman. That woman did not have a degree in theology. She did not hold an office. She had two things: she had met Him, and she had been told to go and tell. With those two things, she changed history.

The Church is full of women right now who have met Him and have not yet gone and told. Some of you have been waiting for permission. Permission was given in a garden two thousand years ago. Go and tell.

Discussion Question 3: St. Mary Magdalene's apostolic mission was not built on credentials or office. It was built on two things — she had met the Risen Christ, and she had been told to go and tell. Who in your life right now — a friend, a child, a coworker, a sister you have not spoken to in years — needs to hear from you, in your own voice, that you have seen the Lord? What is keeping you from telling them?

This Week

Identify one woman — a friend, a relative, a colleague, someone you have lost touch with — and pray for her every day this week. Then, before next session, find a way to tell her, in your own words, one true thing about your life with Christ. It does not have to be a sermon. It can be a sentence. I have been praying about something hard, and I think Christ is meeting me in it. I wanted you to know. That is enough.

If you cannot bring yourself to speak the words, write them. A note. A text. A short letter. St. Mary Magdalene ran from the tomb to the apostles. You can write a single text message. The Resurrection has always traveled person to person, and it has very often traveled woman to woman.

Closing Prayer

Gather prayer requests and close out.