Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
St. Mary Magdalene's memorial was raised to a liturgical feast on June 3rd, 2016, by Pope Francis. June 3rd that year was the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart. Plus, it was the Jubilee Year of Mercy in the Church. So you have mercy, you have the Sacred Heart, and the penitent, whom Jesus told St. Bridget was among the three saints which pleased Him above all others: Our Lady, St. John the Baptist, and St. Mary Magdalene. If you're wondering where is St. Joseph in that list, you can ask St. Bridget of Sweden that question. That's her memorial tomorrow.
By the way, the first reading today and the psalm and the gospel were all very apropos for Mary Magdalene, whom the Gospels tell us that Jesus had delivered from the oppression of seven demons. We read that in Luke 8:2. Some commentators say that those demons represent all seven vices that had suffocated Mary's life and her heart until she found or was found by the Savior. It's more accurate usually to say that Jesus finds us rather than that we find Him, even if experientially it seems to play out in the second way.
The bride said at the beginning of today's first reading, "On my bed at night I sought Him whom my heart or my soul loves. I sought Him, but I did not find Him. I called Him, but He gave no answer," adds the Septuagint in Song 3:1. The greatest search in life is the search for love. Love gives meaning and purpose and life to life itself.  Many of us search for the right thing, for love, but we search for it in the wrong ways. We search for it in things which aren't meant for us or things that simply don't satisfy, like, for example, a life of sinful pleasure. We can accommodate and apply this verse from the Song of Songs to Mary Magdalene, who likely looked for love upon her bed in the arms of others, but never found satisfaction. She never found the one whom her soul loves in all those years of wrong relationships. "I called Him, but He gave no answer," was the part that was added to the verse in the Greek translation, Song 3:1. We can hardly, if ever, hear the Lord's voice when we are smothered by the pleasures of the world.
Then the restless bride in the song says, "I will rise then and go about the city in the streets and crossings. I will seek Him whom my heart loves. I sought Him, but I did not find Him." Song 3:2. Not finding the love of her life in romantic encounters, she goes to the big city. She goes where all the people are, to where the excitement is. "Surely this will bring my life meaning and contentment to my heart," she thinks, and again, by God's grace, she comes up empty.
I lived in the city of Boston for a number of years when I was going to school there and studying architecture. Towards the end of my time there, I found the city to be a very empty place to be in, with all the people and all the activities and all the opportunities. I just found a lot of emptiness. It was everything there and kind of nothing there at the same time, too. I'm not sure that everyone experiences that, or else no one would live in the cities, right? They would be wise enough to just not live there.
The quote, "city life is millions of people being lonesome together." You may have heard that before. That's attributed to the poet Henry David Thoreau. Question: how many people hear the loneliness or the emptiness in their life as a call by God to a deeper communion with Him? How many people actually hear that? Because that's what it is, essentially.
Commentators on the Song of Songs will sometimes say that this passage in the liturgy is describing a dream sequence. So the bride is talking about unfulfilled searches that are a common part of human dreaming. That may be true, but they're also a common part of our human waking as well. We search all around and outside of ourselves for what will satisfy. We have trouble finding what we're looking for. We don't find it. If what the 80s song says is true, right, we still don't find what we're looking for, even when we're awake.
But then we hear in the first reading, "I had hardly left them, the watchmen of the city, when I found Him whom my heart loves." Song 3:4. That verse actually continues. It says this, "I held Him and would not let Him go until I had brought Him into my own mother's house, to the chamber of her who conceived me."  I'm actually surprised that that second part of the verse of Song 3:4 was left out of the first reading. Why? Because what do we see, what do we hear in the gospel today? We see Mary Magdalene finding Jesus, Him whom her soul loves, and Jesus says to her, "Stop holding on to me. Don't cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father." John 20:17. "I held Him and would not let Him go," the bride in the Song of Songs said, when she found her bridegroom. And it all ties very well today with today's Psalm too. "My soul is thirsting for the living God," as we heard in the responsorial Psalm refrain. "My soul clings fast to you, your right hand upholds me." Psalm 63:8.
One thing is certain, that when Mary Magdalene found her Savior, when she found Him whom her heart loves, she loved Him to the point of folly, to the point of the folly of the cross, standing by Him at His crucifixion when virtually every other disciple, every other follower of Christ had fled the scene. So add to her being a model of repentance, also being a model of tenacious love for Jesus crucified. Mary Magdalene knew the depths of her own misery, and that helped her appreciate all the more the infinite mercy of Christ.
So the more I'm aware of my own selfishness, the more I can grow in humility. The more I grow in humility, the smaller I become, and the bigger Jesus becomes in my life at the same time. And therein are the words of St. John the Baptist fulfilled in us when he says, "He, Jesus, must increase, but I must decrease." John 3:30.
Let's ask Our Lady today and St. Mary Magdalene to give us a tenacious love for Jesus, in particular for Jesus suffering and crucified, also for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Jesus, who makes Himself present to us daily, sacrificing Himself on our altars daily, so that we too have the opportunity to love Him with a profound, repentant love, as the Magdalene did. And we remember that after the cross, there will be the surprise and the joy of the resurrection as well, of which Mary Magdalene was the first evangelizer.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.