Mary Magdalene's Feast Day
Icons are intended to be like windows through which we may glimpse something glorious. They point beyond the image of the saint, to encourage the one who contemplates it to worship, not the saint, but God.
In this icon, Mary Magdalene is pointing with her right hand to the egg held in her left. In some Christian traditions an egg is a symbol of the resurrection of Jesus. According to John's Gospel, Mary Magdalene was the first apostle of Jesus' resurrection. She, with other spice-bearing women were the first to discover the empty tomb on the 3rd day. In the garden near the tomb, Mary Magdalene had a special enounter with the risen Christ and rushed to tell the disciples, "I have seen the Lord". They didn't believe her (at first). One woman's testimony was considered unreliable in that culture at that time. (And that is still sometimes the case even today.)
Mary Magdalene is shown holding an egg in many other icons. The egg is sometime shown as white and sometimes red. This is because of the legendary tradition that Mary Magdalene preached Jesus' message to the Roman Emperor. The Emperor pointed to some eggs and said he would no more believe in Jesus' resurrection than that those eggs were red rather than white. Mary Magdalene then picked up an egg and it turned blood red.
I have no idea whether Mary Magdalene went to Rome or not, but I do know that her example is an inspiration to me and to many others. As I wrote some years ago, in a post on the Big Bible Project, I see her as a model disciple of Jesus. You can read that archived post here in Mary Magdalene - model disciple?
Mary Magdalene has been the subject of so much speculation, denigration, imagination and admiration over the last 2000 years, it's hard to sort truth from legend and fiction. I prefer to stick to what the 4 Gospels in the New Testament tell us about her and also notice what they do not tell us. Last year in Mary Magdalene: thoughts on her feast day, I listed who Mary Magdalene was and who she was not, based on what the 4 gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John tell us.
You can find other posts for July 22nd about Mary Magdalene on my page Saints and Special People.
I will end this post with a prayer I saw this morning on Twitter in a tweet by @SrKatrinaCSJP. It celebrates the courage of Mary Magdalene and the other women who stuck with Jesus to the bitter end, even when most of Jesus' male disciples had run away.
"Mary Magdalene stood at the foot of the Cross.
She did not run away.
May her example give us the courage to stand in solidarity with those crucified today
by sexism, racism, poverty, violence and all forms of oppression. Amen."
Image Credit: Icon of St Mary Magdalene by Br. Robert Lentz OSB
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