Solemnity of St. Mary Magdalen, Patron of the Parish July 19, 2026
Fr. Alexander Albert St. Mary Magadalen, Abbeville, LA
The best day of my life was also the worst day of my life… if you can call that time period a “day.” It was more like a blur of three days where I’m not sure I slept or ate much. Reeling from a grace-filled decision to walk away from someone I loved and but still ensnared in a life I resented, I reached out desperately for mercy… and found it. Who knows how many nights I had prayed for it or how many tears I had shed to find myself still caught in a spiral of despair, but on that night… everything changed. He changed everything. He changed me and yet he actually made my more myself.
I like to imagine that that is like what St. Mary Magdalen experienced in her first encounter with Jesus Christ. Some scholars think she was a prostitute. Some think Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalen are the same person. We aren’t sure, but we do know that Jesus cast seven demons out of her. One does not acquire a seven-fold possession unless they are already enslaved to sin.
Even more than her past, we do know her destiny – set free by Jesus, she is the first at the tomb, first recorded witness of the resurrection, and called “apostle to the apostles” because she is sent by Jesus to the apostles to be the first witness to the good news… the news that set her free years before and was about to expand her freedom even more. Now she is our beloved sister, our namesake, and our patroness.
There are many, many things we can learn from this our patron saint as we celebrate her and invoke her intercession today, but we’ll limit ourselves to three: conversion, perseverance, and transfiguration.
Mary Magdalen’s love is so profound because her conversion is so profound. As Jesus puts it, “her many sins have been forgiven; hence, she has shown great love” (Lk 7:47). Sometimes, as well-to-do Catholics, we tend to downplay how severely we need God’s mercy, to minimize our sinfulness and need for conversion. By doing that, however, we bar ourselves from greater love. The goal of this Catholic life is not a comfortable middle-class existence that disturbs no one. The goal is not to barely escape hell, to slide into purgatory by doing just enough to be “good.” The goal is to be a saint! Even if we are never canonized, to enter heaven requires us to be a saint.
That temptation to downplay our need for conversion is a temptation to stifle the fire of sanctity. Even if we never lived a life of public scandal and destruction, every sin is worthy of condemnation. Without Christ, all of us were destined for hell. It is crucial that we reflect honestly on this truth, that we allow it to stir our hearts, to inflame our loving gratitude for salvation so that that same fire of gratitude becomes the fire of sanctity. Do you not want to be a saint? Then you must not understand just what you’ve been saved from. Rekindle that fire of conversion so it can fuel your ascent to glory.
Conversion alone is not enough if it is not also joined to perseverance, to a trust that endures. Our first reading portrays a bride in search of her groom. Where is he “whom my heart loves?” It is that fifth joyful mystery of Jesus lost in the temple for three days. It is the absence of Holy Saturday. After an initial conversion, faith and prayer and Mass are often enjoyable. We want to do all the good religious things. Give it enough time, however, and it dries up. The enjoyment, the consolation, the motivation…
Have you ever felt like God was missing? Hidden from you? You might be right. Sometimes God does withdraw from us on purpose. Not that he is ever actually gone. He is always present, but sometimes he intentionally veils his presence to cause us to seek him more deeply. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” the saying goes. The absence Mary Magdalen feels on Holy Saturday does not decrease her love, but increases it. She saw him die. She knows he is dead. Yet she goes to the tomb anyway. Despite what she sees and feels, she chooses to trust the love she has for him, to trust his goodness despite the darkness. So she is first to the tomb and her perseverance is rewarded with being the first witness to the resurrection.
When you encounter these absences and darknesses, be like Mary Magdalen and lean into them. Don’t want to pray like you used to? Pray anyway. Don’t “get anything” out of Mass? Go anyway. Don’t enjoy serving others anymore? Serve anyway. Rather than acting by what you can see and feel, learn to act by faith, to trust and exercise that all important virtue of perseverance so that, when the tomb of your dryness is opened and God stops hiding, you will find yourself even closer to him than you were before the darkness came.
As you persevere in this way, you’ll find you need the third lesson of transfiguration. In the Transfiguration, Jesus reveals his glory to Peter, James, and John. They see not just the humanity of Jesus as messiah, but the transcendent glory of God incarnate. We are human and so is Jesus. He works through our flesh to reach us, but then he goes beyond the flesh and wants us to follow him there.
When Mary clings to Jesus at the tomb, he says “stop holding onto me.” Priests and religious and ministers of the gospel sometimes quote the Latin version of this line – “Noli me tangere” – “don’t touch me” as a tongue-in-cheek way of saying “leave me alone, I’m tired of people demanding stuff of me.” That is not what Jesus Christ is doing. He is not exasperated with our needs, but is instead calling our hearts upward to a higher need, a deeper desire.
St. Paul tells us “even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer.” Mary knew Christ in the flesh, but the time has come to transfigure that love into a more profound, more spiritual, more glorious form. It is not a denial of Christ in the flesh – he is still human – but it is to put that in the more important context of divinity. By accepting this shift in perspective, Mary does not lose Jesus in the flesh so much as gain him in her soul.
Though we do not know Christ “according to the flesh” in the same way, we do in a sense know him in the flesh when our faith rests on tangible experiences. Psychological healing, catharsis, immense emotional experiences from religious events – these are good things God uses to make himself known to us, to begin our conversion. Many a person on an ACTS retreat or something similar has experienced this. But the time comes… it must come when we have to transfigure our understanding of Jesus as “emotionally satisfying” to someone we follow by “faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7).
It’s something that applies to our fellow believers too. Paul tells us “from now on we regard no one according to the flesh.” Many a priest goes through moments when their family suddenly realizes he belongs more to the gospel than to them… that blood loyalties are dissolved in favor of loyalty to grace. Sometimes they do not take that very well.
This applies to all serious disciples of Jesus Christ. Following Christ fully must change your relationships with others. No longer is “college drinking buddy” or “fellow sports player” enough to bind you to them. Family and friends may struggle to relate to you in this new way and it may well cost you friendships. But we can’t “hold on” to what we knew by flesh. It cuts the other way as well. How often do you hold on to the “flesh” of your loved ones? Your children or grandchildren will stop being children and, hopefully, become mature disciples, brothers and sisters in the Lord. Can you accept that their holiness and insight might well surpass your own? Will you hold on to their fleshly bonds to you or allow that relationship to be transfigured, to ascend to the destiny of glorious fellow disciples?
St. Mary Magdalen, pray for us! Pray that we, like you, might take seriously our conversion so it can fuel our greater love for the Lord.
St. Mary Magdalen, pray that we, like you, might persevere when the Lord seems distant or absence and so grow stronger in our love.
St. Mary Magdalen, pray that we, like you, might regard no one according to the flesh but come to see instead the destiny the Lord wants for them as brothers and sisters in his glory.
Dear sister in Christ, tell us now how you have seen the Lord. Remind us of the glory you once glimpsed by the tomb in a garden all those years ago. Jesus sent you then to his brothers. May he send you now by prayer and affection to us to help us, with you, to go to your Father and our Father, to your God and our God.