The expression "the three Marys" refers to the three women who were at the foot of Jesus' cross at the time of his crucifixion. Concerning the identity of these women, Mark (15:40-41) says that they are Mary Magdalene, Mary, mother of James the younger, brother of the Lord, and Salome. At the beginning of the next chapter, Mark says that these three women are the same ones who visit the tomb on the first day of the week.
In Matthew's Gospel (27:55–56), they are Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and the mother of the sons of Zebedee. Luke does not specifically mention them, but they should not be far away since they are present at his tomb, even if not at the foot of the Lord's cross (23:55-56). Their identity, however, is revealed to us when they go to the tomb as Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James the younger, the brother of the Lord. John places at the foot of the Lord’s cross, Mary, his mother, her sister also called Mary who is the wife of Cleopas, and Mary Magdalene.
Because she is mentioned in all four Gospels, we take Mary Magdalene as a safe bet for being at the foot of the Lord's cross, as John says, or from a distance, as the synoptic Gospels say. After her, the next most likely candidate is the mother of James the younger, the brother of the Lord, mentioned by Mark, Matthew and Luke. If Cleopas, as tradition says, is the brother of Joseph, Mary's husband, he and his wife are Mary's in laws. The second Mary would therefore be the mother of James the younger, the brother of the Lord, whom John mentions as being the wife of Cleopas.
As Mary, the mother of the Lord, is mentioned only in John’s Gospel, it is most likely that she was not there and that in her place was the mother of the sons of Zebedee, as mentioned in Matthew, and who would be the Salome in Mark’s Gospel.
In this case, at the foot of the Lord's cross or at a distance are Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger, also known as the wife of Cleopas, and Mary the mother of the sons of Zebedee (James the greater and John), also known as Salome.
If instead of speaking about the three female witnesses of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, we refer to the three most important women in Jesus' life, therefore as the gospels tell us, Mary, his mother, comes first, followed by Mary Magdalene and then Mary of Bethany. As we make a synthesis of the most significant women to Jesus during his life and at the end of it, we are left with Mary, his mother, Mary Magdalene, the leader of Jesus' female disciples and an unknown Mary where there is no consensus as to who she is, so we designate her as Mary X.
In this text we will speak of Mary, mother of the Lord and Mary Magdalene. Under the heading of Mary X, we will speak of the other female disciples of Jesus, named or unnamed, as well as of all the women who have crossed paths with the Lord and who were part of his ministry.
MARY - MOTHER OF GOD
Our Protestant brothers and sisters are somewhat reluctant to call Mary the Mother of God. However, it is logical that this is the case, which can be demonstrated by a simple syllogism. Syllogism is a logical-deductive form of reasoning that consists of two true statements or premises with a logical conclusion deduced from the two premises. The first premise: Mary is the mother of Jesus; the second premise: Jesus is God; conclusion: therefore, Mary is the Mother of God. If the two premises are true even for Protestants, not accepting that Mary is the Mother of God is to defy logic.
Historically and chronologically, our mothers precede us, it is not in this sense that Mary is the Mother of God, for she does not pre-exist God the Father nor the second person of the Most Holy Trinity. Mary is the mother of the Incarnate Word, for this reason the Protestants are also somewhat right when they say that Mary is only the mother of the human part of Jesus. However, Jesus is truly man and truly God; just as when the half-cell from the man joins the half-cell from the woman, forming an indivisible cell, so also the union of the divine and human nature in the person of Jesus is indivisible.
Some parables of Jesus show the incarnation of God as a marriage between the son of God and humanity. When God sent his son into the world, he married mankind; marriage is the union of two destinies into one single destiny. Marriage is indissoluble, so the second person of the Most Holy Trinity has a human body, even today is seated at the right hand of the Father. This is exactly what Jesus wanted to tell us when he said that he was going to prepare a place for us; Jesus took our humanity to Heaven.
Mary became the mother of the second person of the Most Holy Trinity at the moment when the second person of the Most Holy Trinity incarnated in time in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Mary is today the Mother of God because she is the mother of the second person of the Most Holy Trinity.
Although Mary is the Mother of God, she is not divine, she is not God, she remains human because it is her humanity that binds her to God, not her divinity which for all purpose is nonexistent. The existence of Mary, besides giving a human face to the son of God, takes the feminine gender to an excessively masculinized and patriarchal Heaven, representing today the feminine face of God.
It is in this sense that Pope John Paul I once said that God is not only a Father, but also a Mother. If Jesus represents God in his masculinity and fatherhood, then Mary, his mother, comes to represent God in her motherhood and femininity. Thanks to Mary, we have a more balanced vision of God; through her and with her, human beings are reconciled with their roots, that is, with the time when they used to conceptualize God as Mother. In fact, in the early days of human civilization, in the mind of primitive man, God before being the Father was the Mother.
Conceptualization of God as Mother
We are the objects of undying love on the part of God. We know: he always has his eyes set on us, even when it seems to be dark. He is our father; even more he is our mother. Pope John Paul I - Angelus 10 September 1978
According to tales told by ancient men to attain their political objectives "God is the Father." According to what we really know "God is the Mother." Pope John Paul I - in an audience with Philippine bishops on 28 September 1978,
There is an absolute consensus among anthropologists that the first deity worshipped by human beings was a goddess, not a god. Reverence was given to divinity as the mother of all living things, and she was identified with the earth or soil. The earth, to this day, is feminine in most languages and mythologies of the world. The fact that today we still refer to nature as "Mother Nature" is an inescapable proof that in the mind of primitive man the Higher Being that humanity believed in was a woman, not a man, a Goddess, not a God.
Primitive men observe how plant life arises or sprouts from the earth, the same is observed in female animals, and without exception in female humans as well. The fertility of the female human was the origin of both men and women. The woman was the giver of individual life and of immortality for her tribe. In addition to the reproductive gift of life itself, the man was also drawn to the woman for sexual pleasure and gratification.
Since the connection between the sexual act and childbirth had not yet been established, the women of the tribe held true power. The intelligence of primitive men was still very low, they still lived in symbiosis with nature, as if they were connected to her by an umbilical cord, not detached from her as we now understand today; self-awareness was still much reduced.
With the intelligence we have today, it is hard to understand how humans did not realize that babies were the result of sexual acts, but that’s how it was, because the cause, the sexual act, and the effect were separated by nine months; it was too long for the primitives to be able to establish a cause-and-effect connection.
The analogy of the best poison to kill mice can help us understand this point. If we put a certain yellow poison in the corner of a house, a mouse passes by, eats the poison and dies right after; the other mice are able to establish a cause and effect connection and no other mice will touch the poison.
However, instead of the yellow powder we put another appetizing powder that does not cause anything immediately, instead it thins the blood in such a way that if the mouse that eats it has a fight or an accident and bleeds, it will bleed to death. Since the effect is far in time and distance from the cause, other mice are unable to establish the connection. Let us remember that there was a time when our intelligence was not much superior to that of today's mouse.
Conceptualization of God as Father
Once the connection between the coitus and childbirth was established, man's status began to rise. Men began then to be perceived as crucial to the reproductive process that guaranteed life. The original goddess of Mother Earth was then complemented by a consort, first thought of as the Father God of Sky. The rain that he sends from the sky is the divine semen that will impregnate Mother Earth so that life can spring from her. In the case of coitus, the man begins to realize that the woman is merely the fertile ground where he plants the semen, the seed of the human being.
With these thoughts, the self-awareness of the human being and the opposition of the Ego to nature, from thought to instinct, were born. Self-consciousness is believed to have surfaced some 7,000 years before Christ. The human being no longer sees himself connected to nature by a sort of umbilical cord, but opposed to her from the moment he established a difference between the person and the soil that sustains the person's life.
The story of Abraham is the story of a man who through obedience to a call that he hears and feels in his innermost being, emancipates himself, and breaks his ties with the land, Ur of Chaldees, where he was born, and undertakes a journey in search of his identity and the God who sustains it. God of Heaven, God the Father becomes now more important than Mother Nature, since she without the rain coming down from above can produce nothing. This God the Father promises Abraham numerous descendants and compels him to break with the cult of human sacrifices offered to the goddesses of fertility.
Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it… Genesis 1:28
From this point on, God is masculine, Father and absolute dominator. Man now not only subdues the earth and nature, but also the woman who is the image and likeness of Nature. The key to the fertility of the earth was the rain that came down from above, and this was sent by God the Father. The woman’s fertility also comes from outside of her, since it is the man who deposits in her the seed from which the human being arises; it depends, therefore, on the will of the man and not on the will of the woman.
From this time until the discovery of the human egg in 1928, the woman was passive in the act of giving birth, she was understood only as the ground where the human being would grow, it was not known then that half of the genetic material came from her as we know today. Saint Thomas Aquinas called the human semen the homunculus, that is, the little man. The act of blessing with water gushing from the hyssop, so similar to the act of man’s ejaculation, reminds us how tied up the act of blessing is still in man's dominion.
Mary and the restoration of divine motherhood and femininity
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. Galatians 4:4-5
Mary can very well be seen as a goddess because through her and in her the world was recreated or saved. From Mary and through Mary, Jesus was born, with no male competition, just as primitive man understood how human beings came into the world. From the human point of view, she and only she is the protagonist, the man has no art or part in the coming of Christ into the world, in the incarnation of God into a human being.
For this reason, we see in Mary the restoration of the truth, the long-awaited liberation of the woman from the guardianship and slavery to which the man has submitted her throughout history. In Mary, the woman finds herself avenged. After all, God needed a woman first to come into the world and not a man. Saint Paul says it clearly, Christ is born of woman by the work and grace of the Holy Spirit, with no contest from a man.
Contrary to a patriarchal world where the woman is always a property of a man, belonging first to the father until he gives her up or even sells her to her future husband, whom she serves for the rest of her life, Mary is a woman free from the guardianship of a man and does not live in function of any man, but her son. This is particularly evident in the sacred book of the Muslims, where Mary is the only woman whose name appears there and where a long chapter is dedicated to her. All other women mentioned in this sacred book never appear under their first name. For example, one speaks of Sarah, but not as Sarah, but as the wife of Abraham; of Rebeca, not as Rebeca, but as the wife of Isaac.
In Mary there is a compensation and rebalancing between the feminine and the masculine; in Mary there is a restoration of the feminine power, the values of virginity and motherhood. The male power of sex is dethroned in Mary. In her Assumption, Mary takes her femininity to an excessively masculine Heaven, inhabited by God the Father and myriads of male angels, and from there she reminds us as Pope John Paul I did in his time, that God is both Father and Mother and is even more Mother than Father.
MARY OF CLEOPAS, MARY OF BETHANY, ALL WOMEN...
The other Mary, we do not know for sure who she is. That is why we want her to represent all the women who crossed paths with Jesus. Jesus' humanity, his character, his personality, or his way of being, is revealed to us more by the way he connected with the people who crossed his path than by his sermons and miracles. Let us see then how Jesus related to the women of his time.
A story of vexation, humiliation, abuse and submission
(…) for from garments comes the moth, and from a woman comes woman’s wickedness. Better is the wickedness of a man than the goodness of a woman… Sirach 42:13-14
Since men established the link between the sexual act and birth, a history of domination of women began in all cultures and civilizations that have been existing on the face of the earth to date. In all cosmogonies, the woman is guilty for the coming of evil into the world; the Jewish cosmogony of Genesis and the Pandora's Box of Greek mythology are two examples taken from the Western culture.
We do not need to go back to the past to find examples of abuse against women who represent a little more than half of the world's population. When we can encounter abuse even today, under our very nose, in the 21st century, it is not difficult to imagine what was happening throughout history before our time.
Nyotaimori – It is the name of Japanese restaurants where food is served on top of the naked body of a woman, usually a teenager. Very popular in Japan and in many countries where Japanese emigrated to, it is something unthinkable in Western culture.
If we think that the abuse of women divides the rich world from the poor, we are very much mistaken. Violence against women and their submission, as we have said, is common to all cultures, to some more than others. Western culture is where the abuse is the least; proof of this is that it is unthinkable to have such restaurants in Japan’s neighboring country, the Philippines, culturally not very distinct, the only marked difference being their religion. The Philippines has been a Christian country for over 500 years and this is what is making the difference.
Christianity is fundamentally a patriarchal religion, but when we compare it with all other religions, and cultures resulting from them, it is a lesser evil. It was in the Western world that women liberation movements arose and it is still in Western culture where women are more equal to men in dignity and rights.
Stoning of the adulterous woman – I am not referring to the gospel episode, but to a contemporary practice in certain Muslim countries, such as Afghanistan and Pakistan. If we think that Jesus forgave a woman caught in adultery 2,000 years ago, it seems unthinkable that women still suffer this capital punishment, executed so often by adulterous male hypocrites. The same sin does not have the same weight between men and women. What Jesus meant is that the man is just as adulterous as the woman, that the woman does not commit the act of adultery alone, however only the woman is punished.
Endemic rape in India – the news of our days are the rapes of girls in India and the endemic impunity that occurs in society, especially in courts and with the police. It is often heard in court that it is the woman’s fault because of the way she was dressed, as if a woman was not free to dress in whatever way to please herself, her husband or her boyfriend. For this type of men who have no control over their impulses, women have to go around dressed in a tent and burka to avoid triggering male lust.
Ways of dressing – the burkas and tents that Muslim women wear in certain countries is the most distorting form of female beauty. As if the beauty of a woman's body were intrinsically evil, or intrinsically provocative. A woman all covered up from head to toe moving around in a tent, is like a walking prison. If female forms and beauty disturb some, the problem is not in the forms and in the beauty that are dear to God and created by Him; the problem and the evilness lie in those who see and interpret malevolently.
Circumcision or mutilation – in most African countries male circumcision is still practiced, and it is a relatively simple procedure without complications; the same is not true of female circumcision. Circumcision as a religious precept comes from Israel, but there has never been female circumcision, since the practice of religion was a matter for men and not for women.
Female circumcision came about as an instrument of domination, to limit the sexual pleasure of women by mutilating the tip of the clitoris; this is the Christian circumcision in Ethiopia. The Muslim circumcision consists of eradicating the clitoris from its root in such a way that a Muslim woman can never feel sexual pleasure.
Bride abduction – in Ethiopia where I lived as a missionary, in addition to female circumcision, another instrument of humiliation of women is the act of marriage. The man picks a woman to be his wife and on a beautiful day, and without her consent, he kidnaps her; she therefore ends up married against her will to someone very often she has never seen. I'm not talking about something that used to happen a very long time ago, I'm talking about what I had lived through in Ethiopia and what is still happening today.
All this because the traditional marriage is very expensive; the bride's parents ask for exorbitant amount of money to give up their daughter, so the groom kidnaps her and, after the first night, the price drops drastically.
Physical virginity – I always understood it as an object of domination, vexation and humiliation. For reasons of the female anatomy, the vagina is partially closed to prevent the entry of pathogens that would lead to infections. There is no male physical virginity because the urethra being longer in men than in women, infections are less likely.
The cultural use of this detail of the female anatomy to control women's behavior in sexual matters has been an instrument of oppression throughout history in almost all cultures. I accuse my own Church of being colluding with this ideology when it exalts the female virginity in forgetting the male one. In the Church when the term "virgin" is used, we always refer to a woman and not to a man. Are there masculine values and feminine values, that is, are human values gendered?
Domestic violence – "the more you hit me, the more I like you," says a Portuguese proverb. Pitiful are the women who are led to look at violence as normal, as being part of a marriage. Many women live an authentic marital hell without anyone to help them, often suffering in silence practically their entire marital life.
Denouncing these crimes in a society where domestic violence is seen as normal aggravates the situation. But impunity also aggravates it and sometimes the denunciation does not come in time. Every year women die in Western countries as victims of domestic violence, and still many more suffer this fate in the rest of the world.
Lady of duties not of rights – in all countries, women are compelled to carry out not only the same duties but many more than men; however, when it comes to rights, men have a lot more rights than women. In Saudi Arabia, only now in the twenty-first century are women legally allowed to drive a car; in the USA, women only achieved the right to vote at the beginning of the last century, in 1920. In all countries of the Western world, even doing the same work as a man, and sometimes more efficiently, a woman receives a salary that is often lower.
Women before Jesus
"Woman, leg broken and at home" says the Portuguese proverb. In other words, a woman should live locked up at home and devote herself to domestic life. She should grind the grain, make the bread, cook, spin, weave, patch, wash clothes, take care of the children, wash her husband’s hands, face and feet, and treat him like a lord.
Every Jewish man in the recitation of his Shema Israel, "Hear O’ Israel You shall Love the Lord your God...", a prayer that works like a creed for every Jewish man, and at a certain time after giving thanks for so many blessings received from God, he also thanks God for making him a man and not a woman.
The woman is always seen as a suspect, frivolous, sensual, and dangerous; it is interesting that the word "wizard" in many languages has a positive connotation or not as negative as the word "witch", which is always negative. The woman was taken as being lazy, a gossipmonger, disorganized, ignorant, unintelligent, and living under the submission of the man. In fact, she was always a property, first of her father and then of her husband. On the street, she never walked alone, but always accompanied by a male family member.
She had no religious duties, because it was difficult for her to be pure in order to practice religion. Every month she was considered unclean 5 or more days due to her menses; when she gave birth to a boy she was unclean for a week, and when she gave birth to a girl she was impure for two weeks. She was not obliged to go to Jerusalem, nor to the Temple, nor to pay the temple tax. In fact, the woman would not have been able to pay it anyway because she did not and could not have anything of her own.
Her husband could divorce her for any reason of his choice, because she didn't cook well, because he found another prettier and younger woman, or even because he thought she had bad breath. But the woman, even if she wanted to, could not divorce her husband. If she was repudiated by her husband and if she was still young, the solution would be prostitution; if she was not young, she would share the same fate as so many widows in Israel, being abused and reviled.
Women after Jesus
We went pass Jesus to talk about the way early Christians treated women. Some influence of the way Jesus treated women is still found here and there, when we realize the importance of certain women in the expansion of Christianity, especially women who belonged to high society.
However, soon after Jesus' death, the nascent Church let itself be carried away much more by the surrounding culture than by the Master's behavior towards women; and this became more pronounced when the ancient, culturally superior, world was conquered by the cultureless peoples of northern Europe.
We purposely left out the way Jesus related to the women of his time to the end, in order to see the contrast in the way men treated women before him and after him. Jesus was a case apart with no precedent or consequence for many centuries.
The theologian or intellectual or ideologue of the early days of the Church is certainly St. Paul and not one of the fishermen that Jesus chose as his disciples. Let us see how St. Paul thought and to infer from that how women were treated as soon as Jesus left this world.
(…) women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. 1 Corinthians 14:34-35
For a man ought not to have his head veiled, since he is the image and reflection of God; but woman is the reflection of man. Indeed, man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for the sake of woman, woman for the sake of man. 1 Corinthians 11:7-9
Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty. 1 Timothy 2:11-15
Already at the height of Middle Ages, the great theologian Thomas Aquinas argues that women are of a lower nature than men, and for this reason the inferior must serve the superior. For him there would be no impediment to the ordination of women if they were equal to men in dignity. And he concludes that since we cannot ordain a slave into priesthood nor can we ordain a woman.
Jesus and the women of his time
Even from the human point of view, putting faith aside, Jesus is certainly the person who reached the highest in humanity, He and only He can be considered the model, the paradigm or archetype of humanity. Jesus is the gold standard of humanity; therefore, when we want to know if we or someone is genuine or authentically human, it is to Him that we compare, and if we seek to be 100% human, it is in relation to him that we measure ourselves.
Gender equality
Neither before nor after Jesus was there anyone in all history of mankind who has treated women equally, with the same dignity and respect as men, not even the apostles, his immediate followers, treated women in this way; on the contrary, they immediately allowed themselves to be influenced by the prevailing culture of the world around them.
Accustomed to the treatment they had received from Jesus, the women must have played a leading role in the Christian community after Jesus' death. This would explain St. Paul's harsh words as an attempt to bring them back to the place that the surrounding culture attributed to them. Saint Paul in order to demote them to their inferior status even went on to quote the second chapter of Genesis in saying that they were created secondly, to be at the service of men.
Demolished all prejudices against women
In clear opposition and in contrast to St. Paul, when speaking of divorce, Jesus quoted Genesis chapter one, where it says "man and woman (God) created them", thus affirming his conviction of gender equality. Jesus is the only founder of a religion who never made a derogatory statement about women, not even the prostitutes did he criticize. He did not do what the rabbis of his time did, he never warned anyone against the danger of dealing with women because of their presumed seductive tricks. On the contrary, he warned men against their own lust and urged them to take responsibility for their impulses and instincts (Matthew 5:28-29).
Completely ignoring the code of purity, he never considered women as a source of contamination; he spoke to them both in public and in private, and ate with them as well as with those whom society declared as sinners and outcasts. The women felt good and safe in his company; perhaps for this reason that although all the male disciples abandoned him, they never did and were the only witnesses to his death, burial, and Resurrection.
He had female disciples
Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources. Luke 8:1-3
Only Luke openly admits that Jesus had female disciples who followed him just like the twelve. But the other evangelists, however much they try to avoid it, they could not hide the truth of the facts, and when they mentioned that at the foot of the Lord's cross or at a distance were the women, they had to say that they were there not by chance but that they had accompanied him from Galilee.
Women were protagonists in his parables
Within the theme of gender equality, because Jesus preached to both men and women, he always took care to include men and women in a balanced way in his parables. Thus, in telling the parable of the lost sheep (Matthew 18:12-14), he also tells the parable of the lost coin (Luke 15:8-10), and in telling the parable of the sower (Mark 4:1-20), he also tells the parable of the yeast (Luke 13:20-21).
Since women could not own property, in the parable of the prodigal son he presents a Father with a markedly feminine and maternal personality. Rembrandt was able to capture this aspect in his painting, where it is clearly seen that the Father has one masculine hand – the one on his son's shoulder – and a feminine hand – the one further down, over his son's heart.
Opposed to the clichés of motherhood and housework
While he was saying this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!’ But he said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it! Luke 11:27-28
In this episode, motherhood is placed as being the highest ideal, almost mandatory for women, something like their reason for being, their place in society. Jesus does not devalue either his own mother or the value of motherhood in his response, but he puts it second: the most important thing for every human being is to listen to the word of God and to put it into practice, for both men and women.
Implicit in this text he places the value of fatherhood as important as motherhood; the over-valorization of motherhood has often implied the infra-valorization of fatherhood, and the acceptance of the common practice of the absent father. A balanced human family requires less mother and more father, less the presence of a mother hen and more the presence of a solicitous father.
Implicit also in this text is the acceptance that the woman can also be fulfilled professionally, that motherhood should not be an impediment for her to fulfill any other vocation. Motherhood is, like fatherhood, a basic and common vocation for women and men; therefore, it does not count as a professional vocation.
(…) ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her. Luke 10:40-42
In addition to motherhood, the other service relegated to women was domestic work. The task reserved for women in society was to stay at home; public life was only for men. Martha reminds Jesus of this stereotype when she implicitly tells him that her sister Mary is behaving like a man in her attitude of listening to the master as a disciple.
In a society where women did not even have religious duties, such as paying the temple tax, or visiting Jerusalem, Jesus reminds Martha that in his school there is room for female disciples. Once again, an opposition to domestic service is implicit here as the only female professional accomplishment; this achievement must be within everyone's reach. Domestic service must be done yes, but it is not a vocation, so it must be divided in two or among all the members of a family.
Jesus proposes certain women as role models to follow
In the time of Jesus, anyone who put a woman as a role model for anything would risk being stoned or ridiculed. Jesus did not hesitate, against the winds and cultural tides of the time, to use certain attitudes of concrete women as examples of authentic humanity to be followed by both men and women.
Prophetess Ana (Luke 2:36-38) – we are baptized as priests, prophets, and kings; the Old Testament has only male prophets; the New Testament has prophetesses, and even deaconesses. The prophetess Ana is a model of patience and insistent prayer and is also a missionary model, since she spoke to everyone about the infant Jesus.
Like the prophetess Ana, the gospel presents to us other missionaries: the Samaritan woman (John 4:1-42) who experienced the salvation that Jesus gave her and immediately made this experience a testimony, she intoned before her countrymen her magnificat, "The Lord (Jesus) has done wonders for me..."
Her people believed in her words, they came to see, and they too experienced salvation to the point where they ended up saying, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world." In this episode, we see the full circle of the Mission. Another great missionary is Mary Magdalene (John 20:11-18), the only one who bore witness to the final events of Jesus – death, burial and Resurrection. She is a missionary of the Apostles, to the point of being called a proto apostle.
Peter's mother-in-law (Mark 1:29-31) – she is the first woman to appear in the public life of Jesus and teaches us that health, as well as life, is a gift from God. In recovering her health, she puts herself at the service of God in Jesus and her brothers and sisters, the fellow disciples of her son-in-law Peter. To live is to serve, those who do not live to serve are not fit to live. Jesus will say of himself, "I have come into the world to serve not to be served, and I am among you not to be served by you, but to serve."
Like Peter's mother-in-law, we have Martha and Mary of Bethany and the women who followed Jesus, such as Joanna and Susanna who put their resources, time and energy at the service of the Master and for evangelization. Women who, like the widow in the temple, gave all they had (Mark 12:41-44);
Widow of Nain (Luke 7:11-17) – a funeral procession for a young man, the only son of his mother who was a widow. It is hard for any writer to be able to put so much suffering into so few words. Jesus gives the young man his life back without his mother asking him. I have always seen in this episode a personal projection of Jesus; Jesus saw in Nain's widow his own mother, who would soon also bury her only son, being already a widow.
A woman who would not become a mother, a girl who would not become a woman (Mark 5:25-43) – because the woman had been hemorrhaging for 12 years, preventing her from becoming pregnant and being a mother, and the girl who died at the age of 12 without reaching adolescence, that is, without becoming a woman, it is not difficult to see the connection between the two episodes. "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." (John 10:10)
Models of faith, hope and resilience – Jesus takes from the Old Testament to tell us about the faith of the widow from Zarephath (Luke 4:24-26) and the Queen of the South who came from so far to see Solomon (Luke 11:31). The Syrophoenician woman who is not intimidated by Jesus' tests and insists on the healing of her daughter (Mark 7:24-30). The 10 virgins of the parable who, unlike Jesus' three disciples, do not fall asleep and remain alert and vigilant (Matthew 25:1-13) and, finally, a widow who does not give in before a corrupt judge and does not give up until justice has been restored (Luke 18:1-8).
MARY MAGDALENE - LOVE OF PERDITION
There were three who always walked with the Lord: Mary, his mother, his mother's sister, and Magdalene, who was called his companion. His sister, his mother and his companion all three were called Mary. Philip's apocryphal gospel of the third century
None of the evangelists succeeded in hiding her, even Matthew who does not like to name women has to bow down to her. From the beginning to the end, in all four Gospels, she is omnipresent there. Being the only witness to the death and burial of the Lord and the first to his Resurrection, it is almost in anger that St. Paul, the first to write in the New Testament, said in 1 Corinthians 15:4-5, "he (Christ) was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve", purposely putting Mary Magdalene aside.
Another way of setting her aside came from the Church itself, by making us believe that she was a converted prostitute. Pope Gregory the Great, who invented this theory, thought this way to protect Jesus from his relationship with her. All that the gospel tells us (Luke 8:1–3) is that she was a very, very sick person: this is the meaning of the seven demons. Before Jesus, she had never known health; meeting Jesus was for her the beginning of living.
She was now free, she could choose a husband or make herself available for marriage, but she did not want to do so deciding instead to follow Jesus, the source and origin of her health. He would be the source and origin of her life too, as a disciple of Jesus and head of the other female disciples, just as Peter was of the male disciples. Mary Magdalene is the only woman who appears in the gospels without any reference of a husband; Jesus, to whom she gave her heart and soul, seems to be the only man in her life. It also seems that, among all of Jesus' female and male friends, she held a special place in His heart.
About the nature of this relationship much has been said, much has been invented and fantasized. In view of the only Gospel text that can shed some light on the subject, the appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene after his Resurrection (John 20:11-18), permit me to state the following:
They have taken away my Lord - the relationship they had was not that of an equal to an equal, that is, it was not a relationship of friendship, but rather a friendly relationship. Jesus has an inner circle of disciples composed of Peter, James and John and in addition to them, a beloved disciple whose identity is unknown, but who, according to St. John’s Gospel, is known to be a man. That is why Jesus on the cross tells his mother, “Here is your son…” and not here is your daughter if the beloved disciple was Mary Magdalene.
It is assumed that he was more intimate with the three disciples and even with the beloved disciple than with the rest of the twelve, but even with them, the relationship was one of master-disciple, that is, a relationship of authority and not a relationship of friendship, because the relations of friendship are of equal to equal.
As with the teacher-student, psychotherapist-client relationships, these relationships can and should be friendly, but cannot and should not be of friendship. Mary Magdalene refers to Jesus when she does not see his body in the tomb, as her Lord, not as her friend, so we can conclude that it was a relationship of authority.
My master (teacher) - Jesus addresses her by her first name in calling her ‘Mary’; she, however, recognizing him, responds in Aramaic, the language of Galilee, with the diminutive name of teacher, which we can translate as little teacher, my teacher or dear teacher, but always teacher. Therefore, once again we conclude that it was a relationship of master-disciple.
Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father – it gives the impression that Mary Magdalene threw herself at the Lord’s feet and embraced them, just like the sinner who poured the most expensive perfume on them; in this she showed and gave all her love which led Jesus to say to her, "Do not hold me, do not tie me, do not detain me, for now the most urgent thing is that you go to announce this great news to my brothers".
Conclusion – When things turned ugly for Jesus, Judas betrayed him, Peter denied him, the rest fled from him. Despite this shameful fact, and ignoring the respectful way Jesus treated women, the male disciples blatantly marginalized their female counterparts, even though the latter, unlike the former, did not abandon the Master in His passion and cross, but followed Him to His tomb, and saw Him first at His Resurrection.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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