St. Mary Magdalene

Proverbs 31:10–31
Acts 13:26–31
John 20:1–2, 10–18

St. Mary Magdalene

“An excellent wife who can find?” (Prov. 31:10). The Lord’s love does not search out what is lovely. Instead, His love seeks out sinners and dies for them, washes them clean, and presents them to Himself as a spotless bride (Ephesians 5). Christ had no wife on earth; His bride is the Church — the assembly of forgiven sinners rescued by His death and resurrection. Among them is St. Mary Magdalene, one “who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem” (Acts 13:31). The Lord rescued her from the power of seven demons, and she provided for Him out of her means (Luke 8:2–3). Christians have traditionally connected her with the unnamed penitent woman who was forgiven much by faith and thus “loved much” by anointing Jesus’ feet (Luke 7:36–50). She was there at Christ’s death, present at His burial and honored as the first witness of His resurrection. She would have clung to Him there in the garden, but the Lord had “not yet ascended” to His Father and our Father (John 20:16–18) to “fill all things” (Eph. 4:10). For now He is heard in the Word of His witnesses and is here bodily in His Supper, not just for Mary, but for all penitents “who [fear] the Lord” (Prov. 31:30), so that grace may abound “all the more” (Rom. 5:20).