Erased by Liturgy: How Mary Magdalene Vanished from Holy Week

How centuries of ritual sidelined the first witness of the resurrection—and why it’s time to set the record straight.

I didn’t expect to be disoriented by Holy Week. I’ve walked through it many times—prayed the prayers, sung the laments, listened to the Gospel readings like they were etched in stone. I thought I knew the arc. I thought I knew the story.

But Cynthia Bourgeault’s Through Holy Week with Mary Magdalene revealed something deeper—something hiding in plain sight. Mary Magdalene was there. At the cross. At the tomb. At the moment of resurrection. Her presence is undeniable in Scripture—and yet she has been almost entirely erased from the Church’s ritual memory.

This erasure didn’t come by altering the texts. It came from how the Church taught the story.

For most of Christian history, people didn’t read the Gospels. They couldn’t. The vast majority of believers were either illiterate or had no access to Scripture in print. The Bible wasn’t something you sat down with on your own—it was something you heard. Something you saw. Something you enacted through the rhythm of worship. Liturgy was the Gospel.

The stories that were read aloud, the moments that were staged and sung—these formed the theological imagination of generations. And so what was excluded from the liturgy became invisible. If Magdalene’s presence wasn’t named in the Passion readings… if her vigil at the tomb wasn’t dramatized… if her resurrection witness wasn’t given voice on Easter morning… then over time, her role—no matter how scripturally solid—would quietly disappear from the consciousness of the Church.

She didn’t vanish from the Gospels. She vanished from the script. And what the Church forgot in its ritual telling has distorted the soul of Holy Week ever since.

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Presence Ignored: What the Gospels Actually Say

Mary Magdalene appears more often in the resurrection narrative than any other named disciple. She is mentioned by name in all four canonical Gospels. She is present at Jesus’ crucifixion, at his burial, and at the empty tomb. In two of the Gospels—Matthew and John—she has a direct encounter with the risen Christ, and in all four, she is among the first to know that he is no longer in the tomb.

This is not a background character. This is someone whose presence runs through the entire arc of the Paschal Mystery. While Peter denies and flees, Magdalene remains. When the male disciples disappear into fear or confusion, she watches and waits. She is not just a symbol of devotion; she is an unflinching witness to suffering, death, and transformation.

The Gospels are clear: she was there. The problem is not the text. The problem is that liturgy does not tell the story the same way Scripture does.

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Liturgy as Editor: The Shape of Ritual Memory

Christians, by and large, do not build their faith through academic study of the Bible. They build it through worship. Through what is proclaimed, what is acted out, what is honored in song and prayer. Liturgy is the primary lens through which Christians internalize the story of Jesus. And it is that lens that has obscured Magdalene.

Consider Palm Sunday or Passion Sunday. The long reading of the Passion narrative typically focuses on Peter’s denial, Judas’ betrayal, and the collective cry of “Crucify him.” It is choreographed and emotionally intense. Peter’s failure is relived with deep sympathy. The betrayal of the crowd becomes a communal act. But where is Mary Magdalene?

She is mentioned in none of these dramatic moments. Her presence at the cross—recounted in Matthew, Mark, and John—is skipped over or downplayed. Her constancy is not dramatized, nor is her grief voiced. There is no moment where the liturgy invites us to stand with her, or to weep with her, or to bear witness with her.

On Good Friday, the focus remains on the spectacle of death, on the violence and sorrow. Again, Peter’s remorse is allowed center stage. But the ones who never left—especially the women—are again sidelined. The Passion is read aloud, often with dramatic voices, but Mary Magdalene has no lines. The ritual invites identification with failure, not fidelity.

And then comes the most egregious omission: the entombment.

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The Missing Burial: When Grief Is Too Still for Spectacle

The Gospels tell us that Mary Magdalene followed the body of Jesus to the tomb. She watched as he was laid to rest. This is one of the most tender, intimate acts in the entire narrative: accompanying the lifeless body of someone you love into the silence of the grave.

But most liturgies skip the burial altogether.

The Good Friday service ends with the death. There is no communal enactment of the burial. There is no ritual space for grief that does not speak, for love that stays. The moment that situates Magdalene to be the first witness of the resurrection is erased—not because it isn’t in Scripture, but because it isn’t in the script.

Holy Saturday, which should be a day of contemplative stillness, of vigil, of presence at the tomb, is largely devoid of liturgical action. It is treated as a pause between events. But it is precisely on this day that Mary Magdalene’s witness reaches its peak. She does not leave. She does not move on. She keeps vigil in the dark.

The Church does not teach us to do likewise.

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The Resurrection: A Story She Told First

On Easter morning, Mary Magdalene is the first to arrive. The first to see. The first to be addressed. The first to be sent. “Go and tell the others,” Jesus says.

That is apostleship.

And yet, even on Easter Sunday, her role is often reduced to a narrative prelude. The focus shifts quickly to the reactions of the male disciples. To Peter’s wonder, to Thomas’ doubt, to the community’s slow realization. Her moment is passed over with phrases like “the women came early” or “she thought he was the gardener,” with little theological reflection on what it meant that the risen Christ chose her to carry the message.

The preacher’s voice returns to Peter. The music crescendos with resurrection joy. Magdalene fades again into the background.

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The Verse They Cut: John 19:25

If all of this feels too interpretive, too soft a case, here is a concrete example: in many liturgical readings of the Passion according to John, John 19:25 is omitted.

That verse reads:

“Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.”

It is one of the few places where Magdalene is explicitly placed at the foot of the cross. And it is cut—not in Scripture, but in the way the liturgy assigns readings.

This is not a textual omission. It is a liturgical redaction.

The message it sends is unmistakable: when the church performs its memory of the Passion, it chooses to leave her out.

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🔎 The Erasure Is Not Just One Verse—It’s Liturgical and Systemic

The omission of John 19:25 is not an isolated mistake. It’s part of a much larger pattern—a system of liturgical habits and silences that have consistently diminished Magdalene’s role across the whole of Holy Week:

1. She’s Present at the Crucifixion
   Named in all four Gospels.
   🡒 But the liturgy centers Peter’s denial instead. Peter gets full musical scores and dramatic reenactments. Magdalene gets silence.

2. She’s Present at the Entombment
   Matthew, Mark, and Luke all place her there.
   🡒 But most Holy Week liturgies skip the burial entirely. The service ends at the death—meaning the moment where she keeps vigil at the tomb is ritually absent.

3. She’s the First Witness of the Resurrection
   Named in all four Gospels. She sees and is sent.
   🡒 But Easter services don’t treat her as the apostolic center. If she’s mentioned, she’s often treated as a narrative device. No songs. No sermons in her voice. No “apostle to the apostles” reverence.

4. She’s Present in John 19:25
   🡒 But in many liturgies, this verse is skipped outright, removing her from the most intimate part of the Passion.

5. She’s Not Depicted in Icons or Church Art
   The traditional “at the cross” depictions almost always show John and Mary, not Magdalene.
   🡒 This visual liturgy reinforces the narrative erasure. The ones who stayed are made invisible, while the ones who fled are canonized in oil and gold leaf.

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This Is Not a Footnote. It’s a Pattern.

It would be one thing if Magdalene’s absence were accidental—a casualty of time or tradition. But what we see is a consistent pattern:

• Her fidelity is not dramatized.

• Her grief is not sung.

• Her proclamation is not echoed.

• Her role is not honored in iconography or art.

And meanwhile, Peter—the one who denied and fled—is given songs, sermons, stations of the cross, and sainthood.

This is not about one verse. This is about the deep, structural bias in how the Church has chosen to tell its story. One that lifts up masculine authority and masculine failure, while muting the quiet power of steadfast feminine love.

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Wisdom, Not Just Justice

Cynthia Bourgeault makes the point that recovering Mary Magdalene is not simply an act of feminist correction. It is a spiritual imperative. Because when we lose her, we lose more than historical accuracy—we lose an entire way of knowing.

Magdalene doesn’t represent theological debate or doctrinal clarity. She represents presence. She shows us how to stand still at the edge of suffering. How to stay when things fall apart. How to see with the eyes of love, even when the story ends in silence.

To write her back into the liturgy is not about token balance—it’s about restoring the spiritual grammar of Holy Week.

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So What Now?

We don’t need to rewrite the Gospels. We need to re-read the liturgy. And we need to ask:

• Why don’t we name her on Good Friday?

• Why don’t we honor the burial?

• Why don’t we keep vigil with her on Holy Saturday?

• Why don’t we let her proclaim resurrection?

What would it mean to create a Magdalene vigil?
To write a song of faithful love that doesn’t flinch?
To preach the resurrection from her voice, not Peter’s?

What would it mean to let the one who never fled guide us into the heart of the Paschal Mystery?

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She Was There. And She Still Is.

Mary Magdalene’s story does not need to be reinvented. It needs to be remembered.

She stood at the cross. She watched the burial. She saw the empty tomb. She carried the news to the apostles.

She was never absent.

But the church—for reasons both cultural and theological—taught us to forget her.

It’s time to remember.

Because she was there.
And she still is.

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Credits: This article was inspired by Cynthia Bourgeault’s Through Holy Week with Mary Magdalene, a course that dismantled the ritual amnesia I didn’t even know I had. If you’ve ever felt like something’s missing from the story of Holy Week—like there’s a silence that’s too loud to ignore—you might find the missing voice was Magdalene all along.

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