One thing I love about Mary Magdalene is that she dared to be exactly who she was: a generous, passionate, devoted and grateful person. Mary Magdalene was never, ever a cardboard copy of who she "thought" she should be. She acted out of her core, never out of a list of "shoulds" or "musts."
One of my favorite songs is "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol, and the line that always jumps out at me, loaded with layers of meaning, is "Show me a garden that's bursting into life." I dare say, that's Mary Magdalene's theme. Look at the Easter story in the Gospel of John, which we read on her feast. She goes to the tomb expecting to see a dead body to anoint with spices, and what does she find instead? "A garden that's bursting into life"! And the person in charge is the Ultimate Gardener, Jesus. What a great and wonderful surprise, a gift from the God of the Unexpected. Who was better able fully and completely to embrace this surprise and all it implied than Mary Magdalene, the "apostle to the apostles"?
Happy feast day, St. Mary Madgalene. Happy feast day to my friends among the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) and the Paulist Fathers, both of which hold Mary Magdalene in special regard as a patron saint.
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