St Mary Magdalene is co-patroness of the Order of Preachers together with the Blessed Virgin Mary. This wasn't the case in the very beginnings of the Order (St Dominic is not recorded as having had a particular devotion to St Mary Magdalene), but came about due to a number of historical circumstances and, ultimately, to divine providence. One tradition held in the West (as also recorded in the Golden Legend (c. 1265) of Bl Jacopo de Voragine, himself a Dominican friar), was that Mary Magdalene travelled to Marseilles with her siblings Lazarus and Martha and some other companions, including a certain St Maximin. Once they had converted the whole of Provence she retired to a cave in what is now called the Sainte-Baume mountains (Baume is a word in a mediaeval dialect of Langue d'oc (Southern France) which means “cave”) in the south-east of modern France, and lived as a hermit for the last thirty years of her life. Somehow her relics ended up, having travelled as far as Vézelay for fear of the Saracens, hidden in the crypt of Saint-Maximin's Church in a town at the foot of the Sainte-Baume mountains, now called Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume. When Charles II of Anjou, king of Naples, erected a convent for the Dominicans in Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume in 1279, the shrine was found intact. Miracles were said to have taken place at the sarcophagus and a great number of pilgrims began to travel there. Charles II of Anjou began construction of a basilica there in 1295, the Basilique Ste Marie-Magdeleine, with the blessing of Pope Boniface VIII, and this was placed in the care of the Dominicans. At the same time, many converted prostitutes who had gathered into religious communities were living under a Dominican constitution, and had taken Mary Magdalene as their patroness. The Dominicans must have taken these indications, that providence had gifted them the relics of this great biblical saint, that a part of the Order had already taken her as patroness, and that the rest of the Order had a great devotion to her, that it was a small step to declare her as patroness of the Order. Subsequently Mary Magdalene's feast was first celebrated as a solemnity throughout the Order in 1297.

As patroness of the Order, not only does she have a special intercessory role to play, but like the Virgin Mary, she offers us a model of the Christian life. Firstly, Mary is a converted sinner. Regardless of the gravity of one's sins, anyone who resolves to follow Christ must go through a conversion, even daily, where the reason for hope in forgiveness lies not in one's own efforts or goodness, but in the munificence of God. Mary did not allow her sins or her past state (“Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out”, Lk 8:2), through pride, to prevent God's grace from raising her to great holiness.

Mary and her sister Martha used to call Jesus “Rab-boni”, which means “teacher” (Jn 11:28; 20:16) and Mary gave great example as the one who sat at Jesus' feet and loved to listen to His teachings. Like St Dominic, who always carried around with him St Matthew's Gospel, Dominicans should follow the example of Mary and look upon Jesus as the supreme teacher, especially in the Beatitudes, the “heart” of the Gospel of Matthew. Mary truly fulfilled the Dominican motto coined by St Thomas, contemplare et contemplata aliis tradere, first to contemplate and then to bring the fruits of this to others.

Mary is also a witness of the death and resurrection of Jesus. In contrast to the Apostles, Mary did not flee at the hour of Jesus' passion, nor did she hesitate to believe in His resurrection. Dominicans must also be witnesses of the death and resurrection of Jesus. This obviously cannot be done in a literal sense, but through prayer and meditation on the passion narratives we too must stand at the foot of the cross with Mary, contemplating the death of the Lord, and not despair, but rejoice with Mary in the fact that, through His resurrection, he has conquered death and sin.

Mary has been known, since early Christian times, as the apostola apostolorum, that is, the Apostle to the Apostles. It is she who is the first recorded witness of the risen Christ, and it was she who first brought the good news of the resurrection to the Apostles. This honour bestowed on Mary, to be the first to deliver to the apostles perhaps the most important message of our faith, shows the great role Mary played in God's plan to redeem mankind. As St Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians, “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor 15:14). While we can't know with certainty the veracity of the early stories of Mary and her companions evangelizing southern France, there can be no doubt that it is she who first preached the good news of Christ's resurrection to the Apostles. Following her lead, let us go forth and deliver the Good News that Our Lord, by his own death and resurrection, has conquered sin and death and redeemed mankind.