🕊️ The Forgotten Bride

How July 22 Reveals the Church’s Great Erasure—and Why It Still Matters

Every year, July 22 comes and goes in the Christian calendar. Since 2016, it’s been recognized officially by the Catholic Church as a Feast—the same liturgical rank given to the male apostles. Mary Magdalene was formally declared Apostle to the Apostles, affirming what the Gospels showed all along: she was the first witness to the resurrection, the first to be sent, the one who never left Jesus’ side.

And yet… her story still hasn’t been fully restored.

Not in the liturgy. Not in the collective imagination. Not in the theology that shaped centuries of belief and practice.

She was not erased because she wasn’t important.
She was erased precisely because she was.¹
Because remembering her rightly destabilizes everything.

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From Witness to Whore

Her demotion didn’t happen by accident.

In 594 CE, Pope Gregory the Great gave an Easter sermon that forever altered Magdalene’s image. He collapsed several Gospel women into a single character: the unnamed “sinful woman” who anoints Jesus’ feet in Luke; Mary of Bethany, who anoints him in John; and Mary Magdalene, from whom Jesus cast out seven demons. Gregory wove them together with patriarchal flair and declared the new composite: a penitent prostitute, forgiven by Christ.

Never mind that scripture never says Mary Magdalene was a sex worker.
Never mind that no Gospel identifies her with the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet.
Never mind that “seven demons” in biblical language likely meant illness, trauma, or inner affliction—not immorality.

This reinterpretation stuck. For over 1,400 years, Magdalene was remembered not as the first apostle, but as the church’s poster child for redemption through shame. Art showed her half-naked and weeping. Theology framed her as dangerous desire, tamed by grace. And liturgy diminished her to a pious footnote in Peter’s story.

Even today, the Collect for her feast day in many Anglican traditions opens by thanking God for healing her “infirmities.” Not her faith. Not her courage. Not her spiritual authority. Her infirmities.

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She Was There the Whole Time

But when we take off the doctrinal blinders and read the Gospels plainly, a different woman emerges.

She was there at the cross when the others fled.
She watched as they laid Jesus in the tomb.
She kept vigil through silence and fear.
She was the first to arrive at dawn.
And she was the first to encounter the risen Christ.

She didn’t just stumble into history. She was sent. “Go and tell my brothers,” Jesus tells her. In Greek: apostellein. The very root of “apostle.”

And yet Peter’s denial became the center of Good Friday. His restoration, the climax of Eastertide. While Magdalene’s unwavering love? A passing moment. A quaint symbol of feminine devotion.

Her fidelity got buried under layers of liturgical silence.
Her authority got erased to preserve a male-centered hierarchy.

And let’s be clear: this wasn’t just misinterpretation. It was a power move.

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Officially Apostle, Functionally Forgotten

Yes, in 2016, Pope Francis elevated her feast and called her Apostle to the Apostles. It was a bold and symbolic step—a needed correction to centuries of misogyny.

But let’s be honest: it hasn’t changed the core story most Christians inherit.

Her name might be on the calendar now, but her voice is still absent from the liturgy. Her presence still overshadowed by Peter’s failure and Judas’ betrayal. Her wisdom still reduced to a lesson in repentance.

You don’t fix 1,400 years of patriarchal erasure with a title change.

This isn’t about a single woman. It’s about the feminine face of Christianity that’s been edited out of the picture for centuries.

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Magdalene the Tower

Here’s the twist: Magdalene might not have been her hometown at all.

In Aramaic, Magdala means “tower.” It may have been a title, not geography—just like Peter means “rock” and Thomas means “twin.” If so, then “Mary the Tower” wasn’t just another disciple. She was a pillar of the movement. A spiritual leader in her own right.

Some scholars now believe Magdalene and Mary of Bethany—the woman who anointed Jesus—may have been the same person. This was common in early tradition but later fragmented as doctrine hardened. The more her story was divided, the easier it was to dismiss her.

And what if the “beloved disciple” in the Gospel of John wasn’t John at all… but her?

That makes the garden scene not a sentimental aside, but the climax of the Gospel. A mystical reunion. A moment of spiritual marriage. One that echoes the Song of Songs and rewrites the resurrection as something more than theological proof—it becomes a love story between the human and the divine.

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Resurrection Was a Nuptial Encounter

In John’s Gospel, the tomb is set in a garden. Not a detail—an echo.

The Song of Songs begins in a garden. Its central character searches for her beloved, cries out, “I sought him and did not find him.” And then, she does.

Mary in the garden repeats this. She mistakes him for the gardener, but when he says her name—Maria—she sees.

She reaches for him.

He replies, “Do not cling to me.”

It’s not rejection. It’s recognition.

Love is no longer physical. It is presence. Mutual knowing. It is what contemplatives call the unitive gaze.

Bruno Barnhart, a Camaldolese monk, called this a nuptial moment. A mystical marriage that completes the Gospel. But it’s hidden in plain sight because it was too radical to teach. Too feminine. Too embodied.

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Writing Her Back In

And so we return to July 22.

What if it weren’t just a calendar day? What if it became the epicenter of a new liturgical cycle?

Begin Holy Week not with palms, but with anointing.
Hold vigil with her at the tomb—not rushing to Easter, but letting silence shape us.
Let women proclaim the resurrection, not in Mary’s name, but in her place.

Reclaim her in ritual. In practice. In prayer.
Reclaim her as the mirror of what Jesus came to reveal.

Not just sin and forgiveness.
But wholeness.
Wisdom.
Love stronger than death.

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She Was the Church's First Flame

Mary Magdalene was never forgotten by Jesus.
She wasn’t an accessory to resurrection.
She was the first to live it.

When you put her back in the story, the entire scaffolding of empire religion starts to tremble.

Because what she represents isn’t just feminine power—it’s the restoration of a Christianity grounded in presence, mysticism, and relational truth.

Not rules. Not dogma.
But encounter.

She was the first flame of that.
The Church just couldn’t handle the fire.

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✨ Contemplative Reflection: Meeting the Beloved in the Garden

“She turned and saw him, but did not recognize him.
He said her name. And then she saw.”

Set aside five to ten minutes today—no book, no screen, no theological unpacking. Just sit in stillness with Mary Magdalene.

Imagine the garden.
Not as a metaphor, but as a place in your own inner world.
A quiet clearing at dawn.
The tomb behind you.
Your heart still broken.
And then—someone says your name.

Let the image arise without forcing it.
You don’t have to “see” Jesus.
You don’t have to believe anything.
Just wait in silence and let your name be spoken from within the silence.

If you wish, use this breath prayer to center:

Inhale: I am here in the garden
Exhale: Speak my name

Stay with it.
Breathe.
Notice what shifts—if anything.

And if nothing shifts?
That’s okay.
Mary didn’t recognize him at first either.

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¹ While the Eastern Orthodox Church now honors Mary Magdalene as Isapostolos—“Equal to the Apostles”—this recognition didn’t fully emerge until the 6th to 8th centuries. Despite the Orthodox claim to have preserved her dignity better than the Latin West, even they were late in liturgically and theologically elevating her. In the earliest centuries, she too was largely absent from formal liturgy and iconography. In that sense, East and West both participated in her suppression. They didn’t forget her because she was insignificant—they forgot her because her rightful place threatened the structures they built.