Read St. John 4:7-27
It’s a well-known story…the one commonly called The Woman at the Well. Jesus sat down by a well outside of Samaria and spoke with a woman who was drawing water about the "living water" that he offered. When the Apostles returned, they were amazed to find him speaking with a woman. Why? During their ministry with Jesus, the Apostles had spoken with tax collectors and sinners, eaten dinner with people who had been cured of demon possession, and had healed lepers, paraplegics, blind men, and lame men. Many Galilean women traveled with Jesus and the Apostles, too, including Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna, who provided for them out of their resources. (St. Luke 8:1-3) What, then, was so amazing about Jesus speaking to a woman on the street?To understand their amazement, you need to understand the role of women in ancient society. It was a patriarchal society, so property passed from father to son. Although there is an account in Deuteronomy of sisters whose father died without a male heir petitioning Moses to inherit their father’s property (and winning), that situation did not occur with great frequency. Girls married young and their main purpose in life was to produce a male heir. If a husband died before fathering a son, his brother was bound by law to marry his widow and whatever children were born of that union were considered the progeny of the dead brother and would inherit his property. A woman could, conceivably, be married to several brothers in turn, as was the case of Tamar, an ancestress of Jesus. Her story can be found in Genesis, Chapter 38.
Women were generally not educated. In fact, when Solomon wrote Proverbs, he lamented that he had only found a few wise men and no wise women. Alas, women in ancient times were as concerned with their looks as modern women, obviously to the detriment of their minds. However, being that ancient women had few career options, beauty was their one hope of finding a more financially secure husband. (Here’s a quick aside…oddly enough, in this age of financially independent women, men are increasingly turning to plastic surgery to "improve" their looks. There was a 250% increase last year in the number of men going in for pectoral, calf, and chin implants as well as face-lifts. That‘s a turn of events that makes you shake your head, isn‘t it?) Even well married and virtuous, though, a woman had a pretty lowly place in society. They were thought to be easily tempted and quick to sin. In Jesus’ time, in fact, men did not speak to women in public. That feeling of women being less than men was so ingrained in the Apostles that later, St. Peter wrote that women were co heirs but were still the weaker sex.
How did Jesus behave toward women, though? He had many friends, both men and women. Think of his friend Mary, who sat at Jesus’ feet when he came to the house where she lived with her sister, Martha, and her brother, Lazarus. Martha was fuming in the kitchen, waiting for Jesus to tell Mary to leave the men to talk about God; she’d better help Martha. But he didn’t, even when Martha demanded he do so. He thought that she had chosen the better activity for her, the person, the child of God. The Gospel of St. Luke is filled with parables involving men, women, rich, poor, people accepted by society as well as outcasts. To me, it makes the message of Jesus one of inclusion. When I read the parables, I feel as though Jesus understands and speaks to everyone.
When Jesus was crucified, only his Blessed Mother, Mary Magdalene, and the apostle John stood by his cross. I read once that to stand by a cross mourning was to risk crucifixion yourself, as the Romans liked to send a strong message to their conquered subjects, especially subjects as rebellious as the Jews. I have not verified that fact anywhere else, but I think that Jesus was especially touched because, after giving John the responsibility of caring for the Blessed Mother the way a son was to care for his widowed mother, and dying, and rising, it was to Mary Magdalene that he first appeared.
Some historians are now suggesting that Jesus was sleeping with Mary Magdalene. Certainly, Mary Magdalene traveled with Jesus’ ministry and she must have loved him. How could she not? Our problem is that we cannot think of men and women loving each other without sex being involved. The bible says that Jesus was sinless. Jesus was not married. Sex outside of marriage is a sin. Therefore, it follows that Mary Magdalene and Jesus did not have a physical relationship.
Some historians have taken the theory even further to claim that Mary Magdalene was the actual Holy Grail, meaning her womb was the grail, and that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had married and produced heirs, who still live among us as (of course) the royal households of Europe. Don’t you think that God could have arranged His Son’s birth into a royal household if that was part of His plan, instead of going through some convoluted sequence of events? It sounds to me like monarchs trying to bolster the idea of "divine right."
I only mention these theories because I want to quell any thoughts that I think of Mary Magdalene being anything but what she was…a good friend of Jesus, a believer, a disciple, and someone whom Jesus loved in much the same way that Francis must have loved Clare. Ultimately, that’s what we can all become and what we strive to do when we follow Jesus in the footsteps of St. Francis.
However, let’s get back to the topic at hand, namely, Jesus and Women: The Ultimate Extreme Makeover. What do I mean by that? Prior to the time of Jesus, women were certainly part of society but their role in the religious community was dependent more upon their relationship with men as opposed to their relationship with God. Jesus was concerned with the souls of individuals, of people, regardless of their gender. A woman’s soul, like a man’s, was her own. She was a child of God, a co-heir, and as precious in the sight of God as a man.
This was a revolutionary concept, and one that, unfortunately, was seemingly forgotten as the centuries went by and secular culture became more rigid. When Clare left her family to join Francis in his work, he knew that she could not stay with the friars minor; she’d have to go into an established convent until she had established one of her own. Women in the middle ages had even less freedom than women of ancient times. In fact, within a hundred years of the establishment of the Poor Clares, a wave of hatred against "wise women," meaning women who practiced herbal cures, swept across Europe. Beginning around 1300 and lasting until around 1650 in Europe and as late as 1692 in the New World, mostly women, but also men and children were tried and convicted as witches and executed. Conservative estimates state that as many as 600 people a year were executed, bringing the total number of people killed during that 3.5 centuries into the millions. God only knows what would have happened to the Franciscan movement had men and women wandered the countryside together in egalitarian freedom!
Today, however, we have the opportunity to practice the egalitarian freedom within the fraternity that was not possible during the time of Jesus or the time of Francis and Clare. We are men and women, yes, but, more importantly, we are people of God. Our souls are our own to worship as we are called, independent of our race, our gender, our age, or our bank account. That freedom allows us to benefit from the gifts of all our members and that is an extreme makeover worth espousing.
