As we approach Easter Sunday, let us pause and reflect on Jesus’ very words to Mary Magdala found in John 20:11-18 NIV. “Jesus said to her “Mary”… Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father, and your Father, to my God and your God.” Mary then told them, “I have seen the Lord.” Mary truly was present, at the most important pivotal event in the history of our Church. She was the first witness to Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead! She truly was the “Apostle to the Apostles.”

Yes, we all are so familiar with the above Bible reading, but have we ever heard this story from the context of a prayer? This prayer literally brings alive in a new way, Mary Magdala’s witness to her encounter with Jesus, outside the tomb. We have the Congregation of her own time asking Mary, what she saw? An Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ, PhD, Professor of Theology, gave a lecture on the topic of Mary of Magdala. She mentioned a prayer that is sung or said on Easter Sunday. She in particular made the point of its uniqueness in being said before the Easter Sunday Gospel Resurrection reading. She dated this prayer originating in the eleventh century, and it is called “Victimae Paschali Laudes.”

  “Then, the congregation calls out across time to a woman, Mary of Magdala, who was a key witness to the original events. Tell us, Mary, what you saw on the way? And she replies, I saw the tomb of Christ living and the glory of His rising, angels attesting, the clothes and the shroud. Then she takes what she has seen and turns it into the Easter proclamation. Christ my hope is arisen; he goes before you into Galilee, and with their faith awakened by her testimony the congregation affirms, we know that Christ is truly risen from the dead, and then they ask for mercy and utter the great Easter Alleluia.”

 Isn’t it truly time, for the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, to have its own Resurrection? If gender bias was not mirrored in Jesus’ Ministry, why should it be allowed in this Church today? We often hear this familiar phrase from our Church hierarchy today, ‘what would Jesus do’? Jesus, in no way as well interfered with any of the other Women Apostles. Just as He never stopped his own Mother Mary, (Mary Priest) from functioning as a Women Priest.

To learn more about this topic, be sure to opt-in for a chapter of the book, Scandal in the Shadows. Click the image to the right.