Four years ago, during the Jubilee of Mercy, at the indication of Pope Francis, the Congregation for Divine Worship made a "Feast" the Memory of St. Mary Magdalene whom Bergoglio had defined as a disciple "at the service of the nascent Church".
This brilliant definition of the Bishop of Rome is due to what the Gospel tells us. It is she who first sees Christ, it is she who, passing from the sadness of tears to joy, is called by name by Jesus and announces him to the apostles.
On April 2, which was the Tuesday after Easter 2013, Pope Francis, speaking of Mary Magdalene at Mass at Casa Santa Marta, said: "Sometimes, in our lives, the glasses we wear to see Jesus are tears. Before the Magdalene who weeps, we too can ask the Lord for the grace of tears. It is a beautiful grace... To cry for everything: for the good, for our sins, for graces, also for joy. Weeping prepares us to see Jesus. And the Lord gives us all the grace to be able to say with our lives: I have seen the Lord, not because he appeared to me, but because I have seen him in my heart.
For a priest with intense pastoral activity, it is not easy to empathize with the pain of those who come to the parish. Funerals, weddings, baptisms, news of pain, of unemployment, of tensions, follow one after the other and reach the priest's heart in a tumultuous way, one after the other, forcing an emotional alternation that sometimes pushes the priest to protect himself behind an apparent indifference. The eyes of Mary Magdalene, bathed in tears because they find an empty tomb, can become those of a priest who, after meeting Christ, never stop looking at him and are the first to announce him to the unbelieving apostles.
