Ven. Maria Magdalena, born Mary Josephine Teresa Marcucci, entered the world on April 24, 1888 in San Gemignano di Moriano, near the Italian city of Lucca. She had great devotion to the Passion of the Lord, a devotion which she subsequently zealously promoted. At the age of 18, on 10 June 1906, together with her sister Elisa, she entered the Passionist monastery of Lucca which was still in the process of being founded. On June 27, 1907, the day of her vestition, she received the name Mary Magdalene of Jesus; but the name by which she is generally known is “J. Pastor”. This pseudonym was given to her by her spiritual director the Dominican, Fr. Juan González Arintero, in order to hide her from people’s curiosity and to protect her humility. She later became a valuable and assiduous collaborator of the magazine he founded in 1921.
On March 18, 1913, at the age of 25, together with five other nuns, she left Lucca to found a Passionist monastery in Mexico, a project that could not be realized because of the revolution. On January 13, 1916, together with two other Sisters she left Mexico City, because she felt called by the Lord to go to Spain. For two years they resided at Lezama, a village a few kilometers from Bilbao and then finally in 1918 moved to Deusto near Bilbao, where they founded the first Passionist monastery in Spain.
In 1935 she was called by the Sacred Congregation for Religious to assume the role of superior of the Passionist community of Lucca. During the five years that she held this position she, a native of Lucca, had the joy and honor to build the new Passionist monastery as well as the Shrine of her compatriot, St. Gemma Galgani in the area of the city known as “Fuori Porta Elisa”. She also prepared the celebrations for her canonization which took place on May 2, 1940. On July 15, 1941, she left Lucca to return to Spain where, strengthened by an ardent love for the Passion of the Lord and for the salvation and holiness of his people, she founded a monastery in Madrid. Here, in the Passionist monastery she founded, she died on February 10, 1960, shortly before her 72nd birthday.
She wrote extensively to promote the ideal of holiness of life. Her autobiography, entitled the “Apostle of Love”, is described by the Dominican theologians of Salamanca, Spain as “the most sublime work ... that has ever been written about God’s love for all creatures”. In the introduction to his book, “La santità è amore” (“Holiness is Love”), Fr. Max Anselmi CP writes:
“One thing that somewhat surprises scholars about her spirituality is the amount and quality of the work that Mother Magdalene wrote to spread devotion to the Passion of the Lord and the spirit of joyful holiness. She did this unbeknownst to anyone other than her spiritual director, writing tirelessly, but all in secret until her death. She can rightly be considered to be one of the greatest writers of Passionist spirituality, and also a pearl among the authors of twentieth century mysticism, a very particular phenomenon, so much so that great theologians, after her death, have felt justified and motivated in urging that she be promptly given the title of ‘doctor of the Church’.”
~ Excerpted from the Passionist International Bulletin, November-December 2014, p. 25