Marilena: Name Day and Patron Saint

St Mary Magdalene came from Magdala, a town on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. The Gospel tells that the Lord drove seven demons out of her, and from that day she began a new life as His faithful disciple. With Joanna, Susanna and other women she followed Christ through Galilee and Judea and served Him from her own means. When the other disciples fled, she stood at the Cross with the Mother of God and the Apostle John, and she watched as His body was laid in the tomb. At dawn on the first day of the week she came with myrrh and found the stone rolled away. Weeping by the tomb, she saw the risen Lord, who called her by name, and she ran to tell the apostles, “I have seen the Lord!” This was the first proclamation of the Resurrection, and so the Church calls her Equal to the Apostles. Tradition says she later preached in Rome and brought a red egg to the Emperor Tiberius as a sign of new life, from which comes the Paschal custom of red eggs. In old age she went to Ephesus, where the Apostle John laboured, and there she reposed. The Church keeps her memory on 22 July (4 August on the Old Calendar). The faithful turn to her for her love of Christ, her loyalty in suffering and her joy in the Resurrection.

What the faithful pray for

• deliverance from the power of sin and evil
• those who mourn and seek Christ in their grief
• faithfulness to Christ in hard times
• courage to share the joy of the Resurrection
• women who serve the Church