An Icon of Christ

Gospel: John 20: 1-2; 11-18

Today we celebrate the great feast of the apostle to the apostles, Mary Magdalene.  It was she who was first to see the Risen Jesus and to announce the greatest event in Christian history.  As such, Mary Magdalene stands in a long line of women in the Gospels who are the first to believe and to proclaim the Good News of Jesus to others.  

At the beginning of the Gospels we find Mary and Elizabeth believing in the midst of unbelieving men.  We also see the great faith of Simon's mother-in-law who immediately serves others upon being healed, and the faith of the Samaritan woman who brings her entire town to faith in the Lord Jesus upon her witness.  

The example of these women challenge our own attitudes about women.  Will we be like the unbelieving men who need an angel to tell them what they would not believe from women, or like the men who would rather hide in an upper room than believe the testimony of women? If women are, in fact, made in God's image and likeness, and, in fact, temples of the Holy Spirit, then they can, in fact, be icons of Christ as Mary Magdalene and these other women were in their lives and witness to the Lord Jesus.