HOMILY FOR MASS FOR THE FEAST OF ST MARY MAGDALENE, APOSTOLORUM APOSTOLA – YOUTH PILGRIMAGE FOR JUBILEE OF HOPE 2025
METROPOLITAN DUOMO OF THE NATIVITY OF ST MARY, MILAN, 22 JULY 2025
We don’t know for sure which parts of the Mary-Mag Myth are really hers, but she got a reputation early as a bad girl, even if one who turned good. We know she was one of the female groupies who stalked Jesus from Galilee to Grave.[1] It seems she had independent means—according to St Gregory the Great, the ill-gotten gains of prostitution.[2] He thought she was the unnamed town prostitute in Luke’s Gospel who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, dried and kissed them, to the scandal of the onlookers. She became familiar with those feet. Mary of Bethany, who is often elided with Mary-Mag, sat at Jesus’ feet listening to Him, fell at His feet with grief when her brother died, and on a third occasion anointed His feet in prospect of the Passion. The Magdalene was back on deck again, standing by the cross at Jesus’ death, perhaps venerating those feet. One way or another she got a reputation as a lush, and so in sacred art has long, luxurious hair, and is busty, bejewelled and colourfully dressed. Two of the Gospels even say she had been possessed, super-possessed, by seven demons![3]
No wonder, then, that the tradition has also merged her with ‘The woman caught in adultery’ in John’s Gospel (Jn 8:1-10). The woman falls at Jesus’ feet, trembling, exposed, humiliated. The religious authorities want her stoned to death. If Jesus resists this, He’ll be accused of showing contempt for marriage; if He condones her stoning, He’ll lose His reputation for mercy. If He opposes her execution He’ll be defying the Mosaic law; if he goes along with it, He’ll be breaking the Roman law that forbade such ‘honour killings’. Either way Jesus loses!
He’s the target; the Woman just a pawn in the game. But Jesus won’t have anyone treated as a mere pawn. So, He throws it in the accusers’ faces: “So you want to stone her? Let the one without sin cast the first stone.” One by one, they walk away, until in St Augustine’s words, “only two were left, Misery and Mercy,” the Sinner and the Sinless One.[4] “Has no-one condemned you?” He asks, “Neither do I condemn you.” In fact, I absolve you. “Go now and sin no more.”
So it is that the Magdalene—stalker, prostitute, demoniac or adulteress—was given back her dignity. No longer mere bait, the sinner, Jesus lifts her to her feet. He is for her, as He is for us: the face of divine pity, the promise of a better future, the possibility of sainthood. We all need to repent, confess, and hear His consoling words. We must all be Mary-Mags.
Today I’ve identified for you six occasions when the Maries knelt before Jesus. It can mean anything from fear to romance, but in the Magdalene’s case it mostly meant reverence, and so the perfume of incense is all around. Daring, unconventional, devoted, she fell at Christ’s feet to listen, to contemplate, and to adore. If her good sister Martha is patron for actives, bad girl Mary-Mag became patron of contemplatives.
To sit and think is hard today, especially for young people, in a world of noise, busyness and distractions. But stopping and attending to Christ is a non-negotiable for discipleship. Only by listening to Him deep in our hearts will we know how to apply our gifts. When I was your age, I was a law-student, and I was taught the aphorism: Nemo dat non quod habet, You can’t give what you haven’t got. And so, before we can give the Gospel we have to get it ourselves, before we preach it we must listen at the Lord’s feet. Again, we must all be Mary-Mags.
If the early Church had its myths about Mary Magdalene, so has pop culture. In Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code the person sitting beside Jesus in Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper—onlya few hundred metres away in the refectory of the Dominican priory here in Milan—is not young John but actually Mary Mag in drag, Jesus’ secret lover who eventually bore him a child. In the 2018 film Mary Magdalene, starring Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix, the Magdalene fights with Peter and the others and goes off to become a feminist preacher. Both stories are imaginative, profitable and wrong: the real Mary Magdalene is much more interesting than the Hollywood one…
For one thing, she stuck to Jesus to the end. Maybe she served up the Passover Meal with her sister Martha at the Last Supper. She was certainly there at the foot of the cross with the Mother of the Lord as He hung there dying. She helped bury Him. And she returned early on the Sunday morning, to anoint Him yet again…[5]
If some Mary-Mag stories are doubtfully hers, one is certain: that she was the first to see the Risen Christ on Easter Day and to proclaim this to others. In today’s Gospel, she weeps outside the tomb, thinking the body has been stolen. She asks guards, angels, the gardener. “Woman, why are you weeping?” the ‘Gardener’ asks, “No more of that. You’ve wept for your sins, your dead brother, Me. Enough tears. Like the day they were going to stone you, I say: get up and go, go tell the guys I’ve Risen!” Off she went. Mary Magdalene was the first patron of my Dominican Order, where she is called ‘Evangelista’, the woman preacher. Thomas Aquinas called her ‘Apostolorum apostola’: apostless to the apostles. And the Risen Jesus and His Church now look to you to be apostolic Mary-Mags to your peers!
On the roof of this wonderful cathedral is a forest of pinnacles with saints. One spire has St Mary Magdalene on top, clutching a pot of anointing oil and looking upwards to the sky. Her heavenly gaze is not a repudiation of this world but a reminder of what it means to live in the light of the resurrection. For young adult Christians today, the Mag is a striking witness to what it means to be forgiven, transformed, contemplative and sent. Her life was radically redirected by mercy, and so must yours be. Her statue silently proclaims that sin is not the end of the story, nor is repentance. Even forgiveness is only a new beginning, the beginning of mission. Like Mary, you are called to kneel in humility and then rise with purpose, ready to preach the Risen Christ. In an age of distraction, confusion, cynicism, she calls to each of you: be bold proclaimers of hope, speak of the One who conquers sin and death, and bring others to know His healing touch!
[1] Mt 27:55,61; Mk 15:40-41,47; Lk 8:1-2; 23:27,49,55.
[2] St Gregory the Great, Sermon 591 on the Magdalene.
[3] A prostitute anoints Jesus’ feet: Lk 7:36-39. Complaints about Jesus coming close to such people: Mt 9:10-11; 11:19; 21:31-32; Lk 5:29-30 etc.. Mary of Bethany sitting at Jesus’ feet: Lk 10:38-42. Mary of Bethany falling at His feet with grief: Jn 11:32. Mary of Bethany anointing His feet: Jn 12:1-11. Mary Magdalene at the cross: Mt 27:55-56; Mk 15:40; Jn 19:25. Mary of Magdalene possessed by seven demons: Mk 16:9; Lk 8:2.
[4] “Relicti sunt duo, Misera et Misericordia”: St Augustine, Comm. John 33, 5; Cf. Pope Francis, Misericordia et misera: Apostolic Letter (22 November 2016).
[5] Mt 28:1-10; Mk 16:1-9; Lk 24:1-12; Jn 20:1-18.
INTRODUCTION TO MASS FOR THE FEAST OF ST MARY MAGDALENE
YOUTH PILGRIMAGE FOR JUBILEE OF HOPE 2025
METROPOLITAN DUOMO OF THE NATIVITY OF ST MARY, MILAN, 22 JULY 2025
Welcome, young friends, to Mass in Milan’s great Metropolitan Cathedral of the Nativity of Saint Mary. It’s one of the world’s greatest cathedrals and the biggest church in all of Italy. It is built over the ancient cathedral where the great doctor of the Church, St Ambrose, was elected by popular acclaim while still a catechumen, and he was baptised, confirmed, communicated, ordained deacon, priest and bishop here all in the same week! It was here that he barred the Emperor Theodosius from Mass and Communion until he repented of having ordered a massacre in Thessaloniki. It was also here that Ambrose instructed and then baptised a young man destined to be an even great doctor of the Church, St Augustine, with St Monica as witness.
Another of Milan’s great archbishops was St Charles Borromeo, a leading figure of the Counter-Reformation, founder of seminaries and of the state school catechists’ Confraternity of Christian Doctrine. He helped the poor and the victims of plague. For energetically seeking to reform his clergy, religious and faithful, he faced repeated assassination attempts!
Ambrose, Augustine and Borromeo are just three of the great saints associated with this great cathedral. But today the Church universal celebrates an earlier saint, St Mary Magdalene. And so we might consider the inspiration and challenge that the saints are to all of us, as repent of the times we’ve failed to be saints for our times…