Mary Magdalene made this announcement to the apostles after she saw, heard and spoke with the Risen Jesus. As told in the Gospel (John 20:11-17), this made her not only the very first witness of the resurrection but also its first apostle, or one sent to do a mission for him. 

She did the task he specified: “Go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” 

The happy news of the resurrection is celebrated by Christians worldwide today as a feast called Easter Sunday and an important liturgical season also called Easter (from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday on June 8 this year).

The resurrection is a core doctrine of Christianity in which, as stated in the Apostles’ Creed, Jesus was raised from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion, and he will come again to judge the living and the dead. He has prevailed; with his passion and death, he has paid ransom for humankind and paved the way to life everlasting. 

From biblical accounts, Jesus entrusted the important mission of announcing his resurrection to Mary Magdalene. But for almost 1,500 years, she was not honored for her primary role as the first witness to it. 

Today it can be said that she had an image problem and that she was a victim of misinformation and fake news. She was mislabeled as a prostitute. 

Pope Gregory’s homily

According to reports, on Sept. 14, 591, Pope Gregory the Great delivered a homily in Rome that pronounced Mary Magdalene as the unnamed sinner who anointed Jesus’ feet in the Gospel of Luke. He said she and Mary of Bethany (sister of Martha and Lazarus, who anointed Jesus’ feet and dried them with her hair) were one and the same person. 

Pope Gregory also said the seven demons that were exorcised out of Mary Magdalene (Luke 8:2) were the seven vices. (Some reports say the demons cast out of her would most likely have been a form of mental illness.)

Because of this conflated image, Mary Magdalene was depicted in paintings and films such as “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “The Passion of the Christ” as a fallen woman, a reformed prostitute, or a sinner redeemed by Jesus. 

This image must have inspired a popular song by Freddie Aguilar in the early 1980s in which a woman named Magdalena is portrayed as a despised and pitiful prostitute: “Tingin sa ‘yo’y isang putik/ larawan mo’y nilalait/ babaing sawimpalad, mababa ang lipad.”

It was only during the Second Vatican Council in 1969 that the prostitute label was removed from Mary Magdalene, after much debate and biblical evidence showing that Mary Magdalene and the unnamed sinner were two different women. 

In 2016, Pope Francis elevated the memorial of Mary Magdalene to a festivity, making July 22 her feast day, “in order to stress the importance of her being a faithful disciple of Christ.”  

She is also now known, in St. Thomas Aquinas’ term, as the apostolorum apostola (apostle to the apostles) because she announced to the apostles what they, in their turn, would proclaim throughout the world: that Jesus has risen from the dead.

All women

The Gospel from the Book of John tells us that Mary Magdalene came alone to Jesus’ tomb and found it empty.

Although they vary, the resurrection stories in the other Gospels (of Mark, Matthew and Luke, collectively called the Synoptics) show that there were other first witnesses of the empty tomb—and they were all women.  

In Matthew 28:1, the women who rose early to go to the sepulchre were Mary Magdalene and the other Mary.

In Mark 16:1, the women who went to the tomb bringing spices so that they might anoint Jesus were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome. 

Luke 24:1 does not at first name the women who came very early to the tomb bringing spices. It uses the word “they,” but in the earlier Luke 23:55, “they” refers to the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee and who had seen how his body was laid in the tomb. But later, Luke identifies the women who told the apostles of the empty tomb as Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and other women.

In all, the named women at the tomb on the first Easter morning could be at least five. There could be more (unnamed) women because of the use of the term “other women” in Luke. 

The women not only saw the empty tomb—a sign of the resurrection—but also had a face-to-face encounter with Jesus, when he appeared before them and talked to them. 

Here’s Matthew 28:9-10: “Suddenly Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’ And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers and sisters to go to Galilee; there they will see me.’” 

Mary Magdalene can be said to have a special role. The Gospel accounts differ but all four identify her as among the first witnesses of the empty tomb.

Mark 16:9 also says that the Risen Lord first appeared to Mary Magdalene. John 20:11-17 affirms her as the first to encounter him by herself.

Why were women the first witnesses of the resurrection? And why did the Risen Lord choose to appear first to Mary Magdalene?

These questions have perplexed many through the ages, because the cultural norms at the time considered women as unreliable witnesses. In fact, they were not allowed to be seen or heard in public spaces. So, why were they the witnesses of a most important event?

Cantalamessa’s view 

Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, an Italian Catholic cardinal, a known theologian, and a member of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, cited an answer given by St. Romanos Melodus, a preeminent religious poet in the 6^th century: The women were the first to see the Risen Lord because a woman, Eve, was the first to commit sin. 

Cantalamessa, who has served for 44 years as the Pontifical Household Preacher (to Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis), disagreed with this perspective. 

In a Good Friday sermon titled “And there were also some women there” and delivered in April 2007, he said: “The true answer is quite different: The women were the first to see Jesus risen, because they were the last to leave him in his death, and even when he was dead, they came to bring spices to the tomb (Mark 16:1).

“We need to ask ourselves why this was so. Why did these women remain firm despite the scandal of the cross? Why did they remain close when all seemed to be over and even those who had been his most intimate disciples had abandoned Jesus and were getting ready to go home again? 

“It was Jesus himself who gave us the answer, in anticipation, when he replied to Simon, saying of the sinner who had bathed and kissed his feet, ‘She has shown great love!’” (Luke 7:47). 

Cantalamessa said the women followed Jesus because they believed in him and they were thankful for the good they had received from him. 

He said they did this without expecting a reward or nursing any hope of making a career out of following him. No promise of “twelve thrones” was made to them, nor did any of them seek seats on his right and his left in his kingdom. 

The women followed him, it is written, “to look after him; to provide for him out of their own resources” (Matthew 27:55; Luke 8:3). 

“After Mary his mother, they were the only ones who truly made the spirit of the gospel their own. They followed for reasons of the heart,” Cantalamessa said. 

‘Mothers of courage’  

Indeed, the women followed Jesus from Galilee and continued to follow him even during his darkest hours. They were heartbroken and weeping but remained by his side on the way to Calvary (Luke 23:27-28). 

On Golgotha, they stood watching “from a distance.” This could mean that “they were as close as they were allowed to be,” Cantalamessa said. 

Sad and downhearted, they accompanied Jesus to the tomb with Joseph of Arimathea, and saw how his body was laid there. They went home and prepared spices and ointments (Luke 23:55), to come very early to the tomb at the end of the Sabbath.  

Cantalamessa called them “mothers of courage.” While the male disciples fled and later hid in fear in a closed room, the women bravely stood by Jesus despite the danger of showing themselves supportive of one condemned to die on the cross (capital punishment under the Roman regime). 

Rachel Held Evans, an American Christian columnist and bestselling author of nonfiction books, wrote in a blog: “They kept the faith even after Jesus took his last breath and all hope of redemption seemed lost.”  

(For the early believers of Jesus who were mostly Jews, resurrection was something unheard of or impossible to happen in this life. The Pharisees believed in resurrection but only as a future event. The Sadducees did not believe in resurrection at all.)  

Evans said it is precisely because the women were present, loyal even through failure, that they who followed Jesus were the first to witness the resurrection, the event that would define Christianity. 

But why did the Risen Lord first appear to Mary Magdalene? The quick answer is: We don’t know. It is not easy to know God’s intentions. 

Yet, was it perhaps because Mary Magdalene was braver, more faithful, and more persistent? John tells us that, weeping, she stayed outside the tomb even if all the others had gone. 

On Easter morning, all alone and crying still, Mary Magdalene bent over into the tomb. And she saw two angels sitting where Jesus’ body had been lying, one at the head and the other at the foot of the slab. 

They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”  

“They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him,” she replied. Then she turned around and saw Jesus standing before her.  

In sum, the big lesson from Mary Magdalene and the other women witnesses of the resurrection is presence—beside the Crucified and the Risen Lord. To be faithful in happy and sad times. To remain, even if we do not understand and we fear that everything is lost. 

Happy Easter!

Read more: When the Pope and priests wear pink

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