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Monday, July 22, 2019

Feast of St. Mary Magdalene

The Gospel is John 20: 1-2, 11-18 where we have Mary Magdalene coming to the tomb on that first Easter morning, seeing the stone removed from the tomb and running to Simon Peter and to the "other disciple whom Jesus loved". She told them, "They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don't know where they put him."
"Mary stayed outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb and saw two angels in white sitting there, one at the head and one at the feet where the Body of Jesus had been."
Imagine how great her grief must have been as she does not seem at all startled to see the two angels and only wants to know where Jesus had been taken. Even when she turns around and sees Jesus there, she does not know it is Jesus. He asks her why she is weeping and whom she is looking for and she, thinking it was the gardener, just says to him: "Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him." Then Jesus calls her by name and she recognizes him but then he tells her to stop holding on to him but go tell the others that he is "going to His Father and your Father, to my God and your God."
"Then Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, 'I have seen the Lord,' and then reported what he told her."

It is only recently that we are calling Mary Magdalene the "Apostle to the Apostles. She may be the influence the Church needs now to admit women to greater roles in the Church. 

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