Friday, July 22, 2022

 Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene

(II Corinthians 5:14-17; John 20:1-2.11-18)

Padre Santiago Martin is a Spanish priest who every weekend comments on Church affairs in a YouTube video.  Recently he commented that some in the Church want to reinterpret its tradition.  Fr. Martin said that some “tradition breakers” say that Jesus is not God but a great prophet like Martin Luther King or Mohandas Gandhi.  Today’s gospel belies such an interpretation.

Mary Magdalene goes to Jesus’ tomb thinking that Jesus is dead.  She sees him as a great prophet who was crushed by the Jewish-Roman power structure.  Then Jesus confronts her with the reality of his resurrection from the dead.  He also commissions her to be the first person to proclaim his resurrection to others.  Jesus shows her that he is not another prophet but the living Son of God.  St. Paul testifies to the same truth in the first reading.  He tells the Corinthians that even those who knew Jesus in the flesh must now see him as something very different. The resurrection has revealed Jesus definitively as the eternal Son of God.

Mary Magdalene has become a model for all Christians.  We may wonder if Jesus was just a great prophet to be heeded as far as his message applies to our times.  But then the truth of the gospel confronts us.  We too are charged to tell others that Jesus has risen from the dead.  He is God’s eternal Son whose teaching will endure forever.