This coming Sunday (July 22, 2007) is the day to commemorate St. Mary Magdalene. There is a lot more fiction circulating about Mary Magdalene than truth. Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code hasn’t helped, but Brown wasn’t that original because he was just building on other legends and myths.

Once we separate the fiction from the biblical truth, we have a portrait of a devoted follower of Jesus, even if our portrait lacks a lot of details. We’re told in Luke 8, for example, that Mary Magdalene helped to fund the mission of Jesus. We find Mary Magdalene with other women at the foot of the cross in John 19.

But, Mary Magdalene gets the most “press” in John 20 as she weeps outside the tomb of Jesus. In that episode, we can identify with Mary because many of us have wept at the side of a grave. The pain of loss is the natural consequence of love. Mary wept much because she loved Jesus much.

After all the other disciples went back home (John 20:10), Mary stayed at the grave of her Lord to cry. Maybe you can resonate with her grief because you’ve experienced something similar. I pray that you can also identify with Mary’s joy.

When we cut through all the invented stories about Mary Magdalene and just rely on the biblical narrative, we have a picture of a woman who knew profound joy in Christ’s resurrection. Mary had a joy that compelled her to tell the other disciples her unbelievable story. In remembering Mary Magdalene, may you be filled with the same joy in the risen Savior that she had.