[1. Please Sign in before posting or writing any message. 2. Write your message in MS Word; copy and paste it into the message box before posting. 3. To register click here. Thank you.] Marist Laity Australia Forums for Discussion / Gospel Reflections / June 13 - Luke 7:36 - 8:3 Author Message Kevinoshea Member # Posted: 12 Jun 2010 18:36 Reply  After a long interlude (since Ash Wednesday until last Sunday, the feast of Corpus Christi) we return today to Luke's Gospel. I have said, earlier in the year, what a marvellous gospel of Openness and Bigness and Humanness and Joyfulness it is. We can now pick up these large themes in smaller, particular ways, in the public ministry of Jesus. I believe each story, as we read it each weekend, adds some traits to the profile of a real follower of a big Jesus and a big God. Today we read a story about a sinful woman, coming to the feet of Jesus, and receiving forgiveness for her love. In today's gospel story, an unknown woman has entered the house of Simon the Pharisee, where Jesus is having a meal. Simon wonders to himself if Jesus is aware what kind of woman she is, as she pours oil on Jesus' feet. 'Everyone' seems to know her, and to treat her as a 'sinner' – she has 'a bad name in the town'. [We have usually taken this to mean that she is a local prostitute. It is interesting to wonder then how 'everyone' knew her! It is also interesting to wonder why it is assumed that the only people who deserve to be a called 'sinners' are so called for their sex practices!] Luke adds to that story the comment that there were women (not sinful!) in the entourage of Jesus, and that they supported him and his movement (seemingly also in financial ways). Luke gives some of them name – Joanna, Susanna, Mary of Magdala, etc. We do know a little bit about most of them, but that information is not the point of this homily. Joanna came from a prominent, wealthy Jewish family, and grew up in a small castle in the hills of Galilee. At puberty her family arranged her marriage to a Nabatean nobleman called Chuza, who had come to the court at Tiberias in the entourage of the Nabatean princess whom Herod Antipas had married (the one he later got rid of, despite John the Baptist's protests, to marry Herodias). Chuza became the finance minister of Antipas' government. He adopted the Jewish religion for his marriage to Joanna. How well they practised their religion at the court, is hard to know. As a married couple, they lived in Tiberias, and had estates elsewhere in Galilee. Joanna would also have had wealth of her own, from her father, at the time of her wedding, by deed of gift, as was the custom. She had use of this property independently of her husband. And she shared her husband's upper class status, and wealth. After the resurrection, she and her husband went on mission together to spread the Good News of Jesus. In Rome they were called Andronicus and Junias – Junias is a masculine name: the locals couldn't cope with the woman, Junia (Joanna) being a real 'apostle'! Mary of Magdala came from Migdol, a town by the lake of Galilee. It was the marketing centre of the pickle fish trade. Mary seems to have been some kind of traveling executive in the management of this centre. Impressions that she was a prostitute come from literature that developed well after her death! She is called the 'apostle to the apostles'. I find it interesting that a long tradition, perhaps going back to the early second century or even earlier, has tended to downplay the presence and role of respectable women in the Christian community. If they are there, it is better that they be 'sinful' and 'forgiven' – Jesus appears to do that without having much of a relationship with them! If they are there, it is better that they are auxiliary to the main mission of the men in the group – that sounds very 'party-line'! It does seem to me that a number of women (a lot of them unnamed!) were around Jesus, with Jesus, and very active in what he did. Indeed, their place in his entourage was quite special.... They 'ministered' to Jesus. This does not mean doing the cooking, washing, and mending. [The Jesus people ate simply, and did little washing or mending!] It means being with Jesus and those close to him, as constant companions and witnesses. A good number of these women may have been single, or mothers of male disciples, or enjoying some independence of means. They are not just contemporaries of Jesus. They make Jesus transparent to the world contemporary to him and to them. They make him real to that world. They do so as women do, and that doing of it cannot be done by men. Without them, without women like Joanna and Susanna and Mary and the others, he would not have been the person he was and would not have made the impact he made. It might be good to look at some of these women today. They are still there, still doing that. One is Mary Ward – I mention her because it is the 400th anniversary of her founding the first unenclosed religious community of women, in Flanders (in 1609). She was English. Her group was originally known as 'The English Ladies'. They were suspect from the beginning. A pope called them 'heretic, schismatic, and rebel to Holy Church'. He said the group was a 'poisonous growth in the Church of God'. He wanted it torn up by the roots so it would not spread. A Jesuit said at the time that it would not work, because 'when all is said and done, they are but women'. They were wrong. When a pope and a Jesuit agree....there is something going on! Mary Ward is now on the way to canonization, and has been declared 'venerable' and to have practised 'heroic virtue'. It was really an underground catholic network. Mary Ward wanted to show everyone that St.Irenaeus was right when he said (in the second century) that 'the glory of God is humanity fully alive' [Gloria Dei, Vivens Homo]. She said that for humanity to be fully alive, women and men needed to live in love, to live without fear, and to live in freedom. In her day, women were not culturally (or ecclesiastically!) allowed to do that. It was said – in the culture and the church of that day - that women were too dominated by unreliable feelings to make good judgments and so do good things. She replied that there is no such difference between men and women. It was said that women could not do great things. She replied that she and her sisters had a 'will to do well' and were doing it rather well, in fact, thank you. She claimed for them a self-respect, a sensitivity to their world context, and a capacity to enter into the experience of people around them. She wanted to overcome the human, social and spiritual impoverishment imposed on women by the forces of patriarchy. She wanted 'the feminine' to be developed, not categorized out of the play. She wanted her women to be loving, fearless, and free. That is how they were transparencies of Jesus. He was like that. They showed their real world what he was really like. They could do so in ordinary and domestic things – in daily domestic life. They showed all women it could be done, and was the whole point and gift of Jesus. Too many women were being dismissed and disregarded – as was the real Jesus! What these women were doing was setting up an underground Catholic network to make Jesus transparent to a world that could not see him in the Church of that time! [In the 19th century, an Irishwoman called Teresa Ball continued this pioneering project, and now what she and Mary Ward had begun is the worldwide community known as the Loreto Sisters.] Angela Merici, in 1535 in Northern Italy, founded the Company of St. Ursula, offering women from all backgrounds the opportunity to live consecrated lives outside cloisters. She so respected the individual that she allowed her companions a measure of independence that was not present in the convents of her day. There was real freedom in her rule. Her company was managed by women, and in no way depended on male control or guidance. All were of equal status and each had the right to vote for, and become, the mother general. Angela agreed to have this vestige of hierarchical structure, only to ensure inheritance rights for the women. Angela demanded a high degree of religious commitment. Her companions were expected to be virgins for their whole lives. Her ideal for all her members was that they be motivated by love, never by power. She trusted the members of her company to live a deeply spiritual life without the usual structures of institutional living. Her respect for the individual was profound. Ursulines of that time were unique among religious in having a rule composed by a woman. It is interesting that the Church has always needed people like this, mostly because it gets tied up in politics. In the fourth and fifth centuries, it got involved (tangled up) with the politics of the Roman Empire, and some of its strange philosophical language. It needed a counterbalance. Those we call the desert fathers and mothers provided the counterbalance: they dropped out of the system to show everyone there was something more than the system... In the middle ages, the church got involved in international politics, and the crusades and their strange wars. It needed a counterbalance. Those we call mendicant friars provided the counterbalance: they dropped out of all of that to show everyone a simplicity and a direct link with Jesus. After the Reformation, the church got involved with the budding nationalistic politics of Europe and its religious divisiveness. It needed a counterbalance. It came significantly from free and courageous women. Mary Ward, and Angela Merici, and Teresa Ball, and many other women, lived differently, to make Jesus transparent again. They were what they said they were – companions of Jesus. They were what they saw in him. They let others see it, see him, in them. There is a great story about Mary Ward. The (Anglican) Archbishop of Canterbury had remarked that she was a dangerous woman. But she was not going to be intimidated by Archbishops. She went to Lambeth palace to have it out with him. He wasn't home! She scratched her name – and the names of her companions - on a windowpane! It is symbol of what she and so many other women have been doing since. It is only through the names, and persons, of these women that Jesus can shine through and be transparent for the world. A few more scratches on Kevinoshea Member # Posted: 12 Jun 2010 18:37 Reply  There is a great story about Mary Ward. The (Anglican) Archbishop of Canterbury had remarked that she was a dangerous woman. But she was not going to be intimidated by Archbishops. She went to Lambeth palace to have it out with him. He wasn't home! She scratched her name – and the names of her companions - on a windowpane! It is symbol of what she and so many other women have been doing since. It is only through the names, and persons, of these women that Jesus can shine through and be transparent for the world. A few more scratches on some stained glass windows wouldn't hurt. In Australia, there is Mary MacKillop, now scheduled for canonization. For long periods of her life, bishops did not see her as fit for canonization, but for excommunication! She had the inner freedom to – metaphorically – scratch her name on the windows of every country church in the land. To adapt the words of the 'national anthem', Who'll come a walzing MacKillop with me? There is an intrinsic temptation for the church as an institution to defend itself against these people by taking refuge in the complications it has picked up in the course of history, against the simple truth of the gospel. Luke is saying cheers for the non-sinful, non-secondary women of the Jesus tradition! Your reply           » Username  » Password  Only registered users can post here. Please enter your login/password details before posting a message, or register here first. 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