It’s odd. Pope Francis recently promoted today’s celebration of Saint Mary Magdalene from a memorial to a feast, the same category as the celebrations of most of the Apostles, and almost all I read can be summarised as “Mary Magdalene is now finally an Apostle, so we will soon have women priests”. This is ignorant thinking, not hindered by a sense of history or an awareness of who St. Mary Magdalene is, and limiting her only to how she relates to her male contemporaries – oddly enough, something that proponents of the ordination of women would want to avoid.
The elevation of St. Mary Magdalene’s feast day is not a change in her person, but in her importance for us. She does not suddenly become someone else, but her existing identity and example is underlined more, equated with the examples offered by most other Apostles (except for Sts. Peter and Paul, whose days, being solemnities, are of an even higher rank), or important event in the Lord’s life.
On today’s feast, we would do a great injustice to St. Mary Magdalene and her special role in the life of the Church by making her nothing more than a female version of a male Apostle. As if she has nothing to say or offer by herself.
In today’s Italian edition of L’Osservatore Romano, Cardinal Robert Sarah expounds on two attitudes of St. Mary Magdalene, “which can help all Christians, men and women, to deepen our commitment as followers of Christ: adoration and mission.” Worth a read to get to know today’s saint, not as a female copy of a man, but as an important example, the Apostle to the Apostles, in her own right.
In closing, the elevation of today’s feast says nothing about the ordination of women or other impossibilities. Rather, it has much to say about what St. Mary Magdalene has to offer: unrelenting commitment to the Lord, even when He seems to be absent, and a burning desire to follow His word and share His Good News with the rest of the world (and, in doing so, sometimes giving others a needed kick in the rear to get them going).
