The Feasts

The Orthodox Church commemorates St. Mary Magdalene on two principal occasions: her fixed feast on July 22, “the Holy Myrrh-bearer and Equal-to-the-Apostles Mary Magdalene,” and the movable Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women, the third Sunday of Pascha, on which she is honored among the whole band of myrrh-bearers. This file sets out both commemorations, the hymnography that names her dignity, and her place in the church calendar and the Paschal cycle.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Equal-to-the-Apostles, Myrrh-bearer)

July 22 — Her Principal Feast

Mary Magdalene’s fixed commemoration falls on July 22, kept across all the Orthodox Churches as the feast of “the Holy Myrrh-bearer and Equal-to-the-Apostles Mary Magdalene” (The Menaion, July 22). The day’s synaxarion recounts her deliverance from seven demons, her following of the Lord, her place at the Cross and the empty tomb, her witness to the Resurrection, and (in the tradition) her later preaching, her repose at Ephesus, and the translation of her relics to Constantinople under Leo VI in 886 (The Great Synaxaristes, July 22; see The Relics at Constantinople). The feast ranks her as isapostolos, Equal-to-the-Apostles — a rank reflected in the dignity of her service.

The hymnography for July 22 names her standing precisely. Her apolytikion hails her as a disciple of Christ who, having received remission, now intercedes — and the kontakion and stichera celebrate her as the first herald of the Resurrection who “preached Christ risen from the tomb” and “cried aloud to the apostles” (The Menaion, July 22, apolytikion, kontakion, and stichera). The services nowhere call her a penitent harlot; they honor her as the healed disciple and apostolic herald — the Eastern Magdalene undimmed by the Western conflation (see The Eastern Tradition).

In a number of Slavic and Greek calendars the feast is kept with particular solemnity, and Mary Magdalene is the patroness of many churches and monasteries — among them the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Gethsemane, Jerusalem, built in 1888, where the relics of the New Martyrs Grand Duchess Elizabeth and the nun Barbara now rest.

The Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women

Mary Magdalene’s second great commemoration is movable, falling within the Paschal season: the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women, the third Sunday of Pascha (the second Sunday after Easter). On this day the Church honors the whole band of myrrh-bearers — Mary Magdalene foremost — together with the two secret disciples who buried the Lord, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus (The Pentecostarion, the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women; see The Myrrh-bearing Women). The day is, in effect, the Church’s feast of faithful discipleship at the Resurrection: it celebrates those whose love did not flee the Cross and who came to the tomb in the dark to anoint the dead.

The hymnography of the day is among the most beloved of the Paschal season. The kontakion has the angel cry “Rejoice!” to the myrrh-bearers and so make “the lamentation of Eve to cease” (The Pentecostarion, kontakion of the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women); the resurrectional evlogetaria sung at the Sunday matins throughout the year recall “the company of women with spices” who came to the tomb and heard the angel’s word, “Why mingle ye myrrh with tears, O ye disciples?” The myrrh-bearers’ errand is woven through the whole of the Octoechos’s Sunday resurrection hymns, so that Mary Magdalene and her companions are remembered not only on their own Sunday but every Sunday of the year, the weekly little Pascha.

Mary Magdalene in the Paschal Cycle

Mary Magdalene’s commemoration is thus doubly anchored — once in the fixed calendar (July 22) and once in the movable Paschal cycle (the third Sunday of Pascha) — and the two anchors express her two titles. The fixed feast honors her as Equal-to-the-Apostles, the apostolic herald and saint in her own right; the Paschal Sunday honors her as Myrrh-bearer, foremost of the women at the tomb. Her place in the Paschal cycle binds her commemoration tightly to the Resurrection itself, which is fitting for the one who was its first witness (see The Church Calendar and Great Feasts).

[Disputed: the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women is universally the third Sunday of Pascha in the Byzantine rite; the precise roster of myrrh-bearers honored, and the count (seven or eight), varies among the synaxarial sources (see "The Myrrh-bearing Women"). The fixed date of July 22 for Mary Magdalene's own feast is constant across the Orthodox calendars (the Julian-calendar churches observing it on the corresponding civil date). The dating of the translation of her relics commemorated within the July 22 synaxarion to 886 under Leo VI is the conventional date of the Byzantine tradition.]

The Hymnography’s Theology

The feasts’ hymnography carries a consistent theology. It honors Mary Magdalene as the first witness, whose seeing of the risen Lord precedes the apostles’ own (John 20); as the first herald, sent to proclaim the Resurrection to the apostles (“apostle to the apostles,” see Apostle to the Apostles); and as the figure of the new Eve, whose “Rejoice” reverses Eve’s lament. Through her the services proclaim the Resurrection itself: to honor the first witness is to confess what she witnessed. The feasts of Mary Magdalene are therefore, in the deepest sense, feasts of the empty tomb — the Church renewing, in her, its own Paschal joy.

See Also

References

  • The Menaion, July 22. (The service to the Holy Myrrh-bearer and Equal-to-the-Apostles Mary Magdalene; the apolytikion, kontakion, and stichera.)
  • The Pentecostarion. Trans. Holy Transfiguration Monastery. Boston, 1990. (The Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women.)
  • The Great Synaxaristes of the Orthodox Church, July 22. Trans. Holy Apostles Convent. Buena Vista, CO, 2008.
  • The Octoechos (Paraklitiki). (The resurrectional evlogetaria and the Sunday resurrection hymns recalling the myrrh-bearers.)