Mary the Apostle Catholic Worker Community chose its name in the spirit of tranformation and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Resurrection celebrates the new, a world unsettled in itself and birthing ways of being that are totally unlike our common expectations of inequality, the status quo, and limited mind. Mary of Magdala, a steadfast benefactor and faithful disciple of Jesus during his Galilean Ministry, was the first witness to the Resurrected Christ, as recorded in all four canonical gospels. It was Mary who burst forth from her dawn encounter with the Risen Christ and, as a woman whose testimony did not count in her society, boldly declared the Good News to the fearful and doubting men disciples. And so it is that Mary, a woman, brought history's greatest News of hope, joy, and new life to the despairing, forlorn, and stagnant space of men who were contented to think that death and fatalism held the final word.

Because of her role in the Resurrection experience of the early Christian community, one of Mary's traditional titles became Apostle of the Apostles.

Traditionally, Mary of Magdala is depicted with an egg, which by its hard shell represents the stone of Jesus' tomb and by its life-giving nature represents the Resurrection. Moreover, the egg is a symbol of Mary's preaching and teaching authority as one who saw the Risen Christ and who was commissioned by him to declare the Good News to the world. She proclaimed the Good News boldly, even to powerful and violent rulers: One story in the tradition of Mary's life tells of an audience with the Roman emperor Tiberius, to whom she presented an egg and declared "Christ is Risen!" In this meeting, she also related the tyrannical nature of Pontius Pilate's rule in Judea, which resulted in the emperor's recall of the procurator who oppressed the people of ancient Palestine and who crucified Jesus and countless others.