[bornacatholic]

Mary Magdalen was so called either from Magdala near Tiberias, on the west shore of Galilee, or possibly from a Talmudic expression meaning "curling women's hair," which the Talmud explains as of an adulteress.

*That was likely the source of the sermon

[bornacatholic]

Pope Gregory the Great (c. 540-604). On Sept. 21, 591, he preached a homily based on Luke 7:36-50 — the story of the woman “who was a sinner” who anointed Jesus’ feet with oil. “She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary,” Pope Gregory stated, “we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark. And what did these seven devils signify, if not all the vices?”

With Rome facing approaching war and famine, the Pope encouraged Christians to repent of their sins — and to follow the example of St. Mary Magdalene. He praised her because “she now immolated herself” and she “turned the mass of her crimes to virtues, in order to serve God entirely in penance.” (Hom. XXXIII, PL LXXVI, col. 1239). Gregory likely linked the sinner of Luke 7 and Mary of Bethany with Mary Magdalene because of their proximity to one another in Luke 7-8. Also, by the sixth century, the biblical city of Magdala had acquired a less than stellar reputation. Most importantly, Gregory’s exegesis of Luke 7 focused on the tropological, or moral, sense of the reading. He believed that the seven demons that once possessed Mary Magdalene were not only literal demons, but also represented the seven deadly sins