Saint of the Day – June 22, 1965 – Tuesday
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
“A Roman and Apostolic Catholic, the author of this text submits himself with filial devotion to the traditional teaching of Holy Church. However, if by an oversight anything is found in it at variance with that teaching, he immediately and categorically rejects it.”
The words “Revolution” and “Counter-Revolution” are employed here in the sense given to them by Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira in his book Revolution and Counter-Revolution, the first edition of which was published in the monthly Catolicismo, Nº 100, April 1959.
Saint Mary Magdalene was the first to see Our Lord resurrected (Giotto, Scrovegni Chapel, Italy)
Mary Magdalene has the spirit of Jacob, Judas, that of Esau. The two crossing trajectories cause us to tremble before our own weakness, but we find in Our Lady a safe port. June, 22 is the feast of St. Mary Magdalene the penitent. The Martyrologium states that Our Lord expelled seven demons from her and she also merited being the first to contemplate the resurrected Savior.
The famous episode of Mary Magdalene anointing the feet of Our Lord at the banquet has some collateral aspects that provide some insights into her life and soul and her position in the Church.
Mary Magdalene was a sister of Lazarus and according to the traditions and documents from the Orient, she was a person of the high society. Lazarus was a very rich man and the prince of a small nation that had been incorporated into the Jewish nation through wars and conquests. In spite of this, he continued to enjoy the honors of being a prince in the bosom of the Jewish nation even though he did not have the political functions of one.
He and his sisters were people of high class. While Mary Magdalene had decayed considerably and become a public sinner, after her repentance it became clear that she had come to represent two things. On the one hand contemplation and on the other, penance.
She represented contemplation in contrast to Martha in the famous episode in which Our Lord said to Martha – who was reproaching Magdalene for not taking care of household chores but just looking at and listening to Our Lord – “Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her.” She thus came to represent pure contemplation, a contemplation not united to active life but a purely contemplative state; she was detached from active life and living exclusively for contemplation.