Feast of St. Mary Magdelene
National Assembly, Council of Major Superiors of Men
Baltimore, Maryland
July 22, 2025
Warm Welcome
I’m delighted to welcome all of you to the Archdiocese of Baltimore for these days of your CMSM National Assembly. I hope you will enjoy your time in Baltimore and perhaps have an opportunity to visit some of its historic sites, including the Basilica of the Assumption, America’s first Cathedral, just a short distance from here. Let me express my deepest gratitude for the many religious communities that have served and continue to serve in the Archdiocese of Baltimore – I am grateful not only for what they do but for who they are and for the gifts and charisms they bring to this local church. My prayers for a time of fruitful prayer, dialogue, and decision.
The Theme and the Feast
Your theme, “Rejoice in Hope: Solidarity and Fraternity” fits well with the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene. Before our eyes, Mary Magdalene journeys to faith and hope in the Risen Lord. We meet her as she comes to Jesus’ tomb, early in the morning, on the first day of the week. Jesus had already touched Mary’s soul with the healing balm of his love; now she continues to love him even if she thought he was gone forever.
When Mary saw that the stone was rolled away and discovered that Jesus’ body was not in the tomb, she concluded that it must have been stolen. That is what she reported to the Apostles: “They have taken the Lord from the tomb and we do not know where they put him.”
But Mary’s second visit to the tomb was different. Peter and John had hastened to the tomb and then returned home. But Mary stood outside the tomb weeping. Sorrowful as she was, there must have been a persistent streak in her, for she peers into the tomb yet again, and in her concern for Jesus’ missing body, scarcely notices the presence of two angels who ask her why she is weeping. Sensing another presence, she turns around, thinking it was the gardener. Instead she encounters the Risen Lord when he calls her by name: “Mary”. With that, her faith was kindled, her hope ignited, her sorrow turned to joy.
The sound of her name on the lips of the Risen One turned her life upside down and inside out – and filled her, not with a fleeting joy, but with a joy no one could take from her. Naturally, Mary wanted to embrace Jesus, but now everything was different. Jesus was already looking to his heavenly Father and the completion of his mission in his exaltation and the sending of the Spirit. So it was that the Risen Lord entrusted Mary Magdalene with a mission: “Go to my brothers and tell them, “I am going to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God.” With that, she returns to the Apostles, not as a messenger with news of a stolen body, but rather as the apostle of the new and greatest hope: “I have seen the Lord!” “My life is changed! Everything has changed! He lives!”
Solidarity and Fraternity
In a world that often seems bereft of hope, a world where bonds of trust and friendship seem to be short supply, how important to remember this electrifying moment in salvation history, a moment not trapped in the past, but one that lives on in communal anamnesis in the Spirit. If we would bear witness to the Risen Lord in our consecrated lives, we, together, must experience Mary Magdalene’s announcement anew, with an amazement that does not fade, a faith that does not flicker, a hope that does not disappoint, a zeal that does grow cold.
For the Lord has called us by name and has made us part of communities of faith consecrated to his Name. When we stand in solidarity with a Church diverse in her gifts and cultures, when we are united by fraternal love in proclaiming the astounding truth of the Resurrection, then it is that we, like Mary Magdalene, become credible witnesses. That’s because we can say that encountering the Risen Lord has changed us … changed our communities, changed our lives forever. Solidarity and fraternity are not abstractions or luxuries, not are they merely the ingredients for happy community living: they are at the heart of the mission entrusted by the Lord to us: to announce to one and all that our Redeemer lives!
A Waiting World
How many people do we encounter in the course of ministry who are waiting to know that there is Someone who knows them, Someone who sees their sufferings, Someone who loves them in spite of weakness, Someone who calls them by name? How many people amid the fog of sorrow and disappointment search for God, only to discover, as did Mary Magdalene, that it is the Lord who has come in search of them? How beautiful that the Son of God has entered into solidarity and fraternity with the human family in the deepest imaginable way: by the mystery of his Incarnation and his Pasch. It is we who are messengers of this Good News but only to the degree that it has first overtaken and transformed us, both individually and communally.
For all the graces we have received, we are all still a work-in-progress. We sometimes carry about with us the baggage of disappointment, failure, and cynicism. We too need to be reminded that God is close to us, that he calls us by name, and says, “Rise, stop weeping, I have come to free you!” Thus risen and freed, we are agents of hope, solidarity, fraternity … and joy!