Saint Maria Magdalena

In Gospels speech of Maria Magdalena, the pecadora (Luc 7, 37-50); Maria Magdalena, one of the women who followed the Gentleman (Jn 20, 10-18) and Maria de Betania, the sister of Lazaro (Lc 10, 38-42). The Roman liturgy identifies to the three women with the name of Maria Magdalena, since it makes the old western tradition from the time of San Gregorio Magno.

The name of Maria Magdalena drift of Magdala, a population located on the western border of the sea of Galilea, near Tiberíades, in which the Gentleman found for the first time that woman. San Lucas makes notice that it was a pecadora (although does not affirm that prostituta has been one, as it assumes commonly). Christ had supper in house of a fariseo where the pecadora appeared and at the moment it in front of threw to the ground the Gentleman, it lay down to cry and it wiped the feet to him with his hair. Later the perfume anointed to him that took in an alabaster glass. The fariseo interpreted the silence of Christ as a species of approval of the sin and murmured in its heart. Jesus recriminated to him by his thoughts. He asked to him in parabola form which of two indebted ones must greater gratefulness to its creditor: that one to whom a greater debt is pardoned, or to that an extreme minor pardons itself. In the following chapter, San Lucas, speaks of the trips of Christ by Galilea, says that they accompanied the apostles to him and who they served several women to him.

Among them it appeared Maria Magdalena, of whom she had thrown "seven demons". Also one remembers to Maria Magdalena by other episodes. In the darkest hour of the life of Christ, Maria Magdalena contemplated the cross to certain distance. Accompanied by "the other Maria", she discovered that somebody had separated the heavy stone from the tomb of the Gentleman. First person was she it who saw, saluted and recognized revived Christ. Maria Magdalena, the contemplativa, was the first witness of the resurrection of the Gentleman, without who vain it is our hope. The Son of God wanted to show the glory of his resurrection to that woman stained by the sin and sanctified by the penance. The Eastern tradition affirms that after Pentecostés, it went to live to Efeso with the Virgin Maria and San Juan and who it died there. But, according to the French tradition adopted by the Roman Martirologio and very spread in the West, Maria Magdalena went with Lazaro and Marta to evangelizar Provenza and spent the thirty years of her life in Marine the Alps, in the cavern of Sainte Baume. Shortly before its death it was transferred miraculously to the chapel of San Maximino, where it received the last sacraments and it was buried by santo.