Posted on 09/04/2002 7:53:27 AM PDT by petrusv2
Jesus, the Church, Male and Female
Discipleship & Service
TCR Note: While there is no question after the Holy Father's Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, that the ministerial priesthood is reserved to males, it is not on account of any inequality between male and female, but simply the divine consititution of the Church in all her different charisms bestowed by God for the unity and upbuilding of all in union with Peter and the living magisterium:
1 Corinthians 12 27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 28And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. 29Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues[4] ? Do all interpret? 31But eagerly desire[5] the greater gifts....(1 Corinthians 13: which is Love / Charity)
This certainly does not mean that women or girls must necessarily be excluded from all service at the Mass as a matter of orthodoxy, whether as altar servers, readers of Holy Scripture, or as Eucharistic Ministers. The fact is women were very close to Our Lord on the cross at Calvary---of which the Mass is the re-enactment through time--- while many of his male followers fled in fear. Women have always been especially near the cross even if in different ways according to the traditions of different ages and epochs.
What follows is gleaned from various sources in regards to women and their significance in the Gospel and Church service:
On his way to Calvary, "A great number of people followed him and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing over him" (Luke23, 27). On Calvary itself, "Many women were also there, looking on from a distance" (Matthew 27, 55). Women attended his burial: they "followed and saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments" (Luke 23, 55-56). On Easter morning, they came to finish anointing his body, but found an empty tomb (Matthew 28, 1-10; John 20, 1-10).
Women customarily comforted the dying and buried the dead in Jesus' time and the gospel accounts of the passion recognize them fulfilling these roles. Indeed, Veronica admirably fulfills the gospel portrait-- a woman who reaches out to someone who is suffering and finds God's face behind the disguise. More about Veronica's veil
Consider that:
* It was considered "better to burn the words of the law (the Torah) than to be delivered to women." Jewish women received no education, and were married as soon as they became fertile, usually around the age of 12 or 13. One week of the month (during her menses) she was unclean, and anything she touched during that time, including food and other persons, was considered contaminated.
* A respectible Jewish women was kept confined at home, hidden from view. She spoke with no man outside of her family. She had no honorable status except when she married and bore a male child. Unless this happened, she was without honor even in her own family.
* Public affairs were the domain of men only. In public, a woman was forbidden to speak to any man, and a man was forbidden to speak with any woman, even to acknowlege his wife.
* Traveling by women, except for such conventional purposes as visiting family and attending certain religious feasts, was considered deviant behavior, usually with sexually illicit overtones.
The Attitude of Jesus toward Women and the Family
By Rudolf Schnackenburg
The foundation of holy and happy marriage and family life is reverence for the dignity of women. What was Jesus' attitude to women? He did not undertake to make changes in their legal status, which in the Old Testament and Judaism was far from being one of equality of rights, but his actual behaviour bears witness to high esteem, serious evaluation of their religious aspirations, and delicate tact, rarely encountered in later Judaism. There is also his love, as their saviour,. for sinners and prostitutes (Luke 7:36-50; John 7:53- 8,11; Matt. 21:31f.), which was totally incomprehensible from the point of view of the Pharisees. But when it seemed necessary to him for his work as Messias, Jesus even overstepped the bounds of Jewish custom and outlook in his dealings with women. He spoke to the Samaritan woman at Jacob's Well, though to do so was considered unseemly for a man and especially for a rabbi (John 4:27). He allowed himself to be touched by the woman with an issue of blood, though that made him ritually unclean (Mark 5:27-34 par.). For the sake of a poor, bent woman "whom Satan hath bound these eighteen years" he broke the Sabbath in order to free this "daughter of Abraham" (a title of honour not often recorded) from the evil besetting her (Luke 13:10-17). He performed a strikingly large number of miracles of healing for women (in addition to the above, Simon Peter's mother-in-law, Mark 1:29-31 par.; Jairus' daughter, Mark 5:21 to 43 par.; the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman, Mark 7:24-30 par.; Mary of Magdala, Luke 8:2). The sorrow of the widow of Naim moved him to sympathy (Luke 7:13); he did not refuse the request of the Syro-Phoenician woman (Mark 7:28 f.). He praised and called attention to the great spirit of sacrifice of the widow who threw her mite into the temple treasury (Mark 12:41-44 par.). He defended the act that Mary of Bethania performed for love, anointing his head and his feet (Mark 14:3-8 par.; John 12: 1-8).
He allowed women among his following and accepted the help they gave (Luke 8:2f.), visited the family at Bethania, and wished both sisters to listen to what he had to say (Luke 10:38).
On the way of the Cross he instructed the grieving women (Luke 23:27-31). Even his conversation with the Samaritan woman shows him primarily (at least in the mind of the evangelist), not as a master of spiritual direction but as a preacher of revelation. St John's account is directly concerned not with the woman's moral conversion but rather with her faith and Jesus gladly allows this woman to help him to make the fields ripe for harvest in Samaria also (vv. 28 ff.). The conversation with Martha (John 11:20-27) is another act of lofty self-revelation on the part of the Johannine Christ The same evangelist tells of the appearance of the Risen Lord to Mary Magdalene, who becomes his messenger, the first to bring to his brethren the news of the ascent to the Father (20: 11-18).
The only conclusion to be drawn from all this is that Jesus did not differentiate in his preaching between men and women; women were to hear the word of God, experience messianic salvation and participate in the future kingdom of God in complete equality with men. Then, after the general resurrection, sexual differences will become meaningless, for marriage and giving in marriage will come to an end (Mark 12:25 par.). The religious equality of rights recognized by Jesus for women and given expression by him in practice, this equality of dignity in the sight of God, was bound in the long run to exert a deeper influence and be more conducive to the raising of the dignity of women than any particular social reforms could have done.
Above all, by his attitude, Jesus saved women from being thought of as merely sexual beings, honouring them as human beings, persons, children of God.
Of great significance for the status of women and for marriage and family life was Jesus' decree that according to the will of God originally marriage was indissoluble, and was now obligatorily so again. Already in the Sermon on the Mount there are sharp words against adultery (even that simply committed in the heart by desire), and also against all divorce. But he also took up a definite position on this question in a discussion recorded by Mark 10:2-12 and Matthew 19:3-9.
Jesus brought two earlier scriptural passages (Gen. 1:27; 2:24) into the field against the Mosaic dispensation allowing a bill of divorce to be made out and the woman sent away (Deut. 24: 1). From them he argued that the primordial will of God at the beginning of creation intended the indissolubility of marriage. Moses' "commandment" was given only because of the "hardness of heart" of the Jews, and now the order established at the creation is once again to prevail, so Jesus announces in God's name, "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."
By the reference back to the texts in Genesis, woman is assigned equality of dignity with man. "Male and female he created them"; "And they shall be two in one flesh." The husband leaves the community of his family in which he has lived hitherto ("leaves father and mother") and forms with his wife a new community. The two become so completely one that they can never again be separated; such is the conclusion Jesus draws from the Scriptural text, the proof follows precisely from this oneness of husband and wife.
The Moral Teaching of the New Testament (Herder and Herder, 1965), pp. 132-136.
Jesus Liberates Women and Men
When we try to reconstruct Jesus’ attitude to women, we detect an awareness of their presence among his audience. Jesus draws his examples from the life of women, no less than from the life of men. He knows that women keep their treasures in boxes, and that they light a lamp at dusk (Matthew 6,19-21; 5,15-16). He speaks of children playing in the market place and of girls waiting for the bridegroom at a wedding (Matthew 11,16-19; 25,1-13). He often tells his parables in pairs, with a story about a woman running parallel to a story about a man:
- the housewife who mixes leaven in the dough/ the farmer who plants a mustard seed;
- the woman who lost a coin/ the shepherd who lost a sheep;
- the widow pestering the judge/ the friend waking up his neighbour at night.
Luke 13,18-21; 15,3-10; 11,5-13 and 18,1-8.
We can be sure that Mary, Jesus’ mother, had a great influence on him. Jesus learned many of his ideals from her. She must have encouraged him when he began his public ministry. A trace of this has been recorded in the Gospel of John. During the wedding at Cana it was Mary who urged him to perform his first miracle. ‘My hour has not yet come’, Jesus protested. But when she quietly insisted, he changed his mind and ushered in the messianic era by turning water into wine John 2,1-12).
At various crucial stages in his own development Jesus was prompted to action through encounters with women.
* When the woman who suffered of a flow of blood touched Jesus from behind, ‘he perceived in himself that power had gone forth from him’. Perhaps, Jesus’ healing ministry took its beginning from such encounters (Mark 5,21-43).
* The Syro-Phoenician woman pleaded with Jesus to drive the demon from her daughter. Jesus refused because he felt his mission was restricted to his own people. However, the woman argues with him; and Jesus gives in, thus making a first step on the way to his universal mission (Mark 7,24-30).
* In the house of Mary and Martha Jesus meets, perhaps for the first time, a woman who, like the men who sit at his feet, wants to be a disciple. Jesus is impressed by this and encourages her ‘discipleship’ even if it runs counter to conventional expectations of a woman’s role (Luke 10,38-42; see also 8,1-3).
Jesus also responded to the silent gestures of women: the repentant prostitute who poured ointment on his feet, the widow of Nain who walked behind the bier of her dead son, the woman who was bent double with arthritis, the widow in the Temple who put two small coins in the offering box, and the women of Jerusalem who wept as they saw Jesus carrying his cross (Luke 7,36-50; 7,11-17; 13,10-17; 21,1-4 and 23,27-31).
From all these and other texts we can be sure that the historical Jesus was very much aware of the concerns of women. He cared about them. He learned from them. He recognised in their needs, and their suggestions, promptings by the Spirit. The forgiveness and reconciliation he brought from his Father, were as much for women as for men.
Jesus Christ liberates
We could now proceed to a deeper level and ask: What use has Jesus’ concern been to women? Has it actually resulted in facts of liberation? Has the Risen Christ proved as effective for women as the promise held out by Jesus of Nazareth?
The answer is: yes. The position of women in religion changed dramatically with the coming of Christ. Whereas she had only belonged indirectly to the covenant of Moses, woman was now made a child of God on an equal footing with man.
In the Old Testament, it was only the men who were the immediate bearers of the covenant. It was the male children who were circumcised when they were eight days old (Genesis 17,9-14). The covenant, therefore, was concluded directly with the men. Women belonged to it only through men - first as daughters of their fathers, then as wives of their husbands.
In the Temple at Jerusalem, Jewish women could enter inside the wall of separation into the court of women. They were not allowed to proceed further.
The men, on the other hand, could enter the court of Israel. It was this court that faced the altar of holocausts and it was there that the priests accepted the gifts for the sacrifice. When Mary and Joseph presented Jesus in the Temple, Mary had to stay back in the court of women, while Joseph carried the child Jesus and the turtle doves into the court of Israel. It was there, in the women’s enclosure, that they met Simeon and Anna (Luke 2,22-38).
Also in traditional Judaism the same distinction persisted. It was the men who were required to recite the regular prayers. Men had the principal seats in the synagogues. Men could read from the Torah. Only males, ten of them, could form the quorum, minyan, required for public prayers. At the age of 13, boys were initiated into their adult religious duties by the Bar Mitzvah ceremony. No such thing existed for girls.
It is with this background in mind that we can appreciate the revolutionary change brought by Christ. For both men and women are initiated into the new covenant by one and the same rite, namely baptism. We have already seen above that in baptism we die with Jesus and rise with Jesus. Both men and women undergo this transformation and come out as ‘a new creation’.
On account of this, both men and women share equally in the eucharistic meal and have complete, albeit different, religious duties. These are factual changes with enormous consequences in the history of the world.
The Pauline conclusion is beautiful indeed:
All of you are children of God
through faith in Christ Jesus.
All of you who have been baptized in Christ,
have clothed yourselves in Christ.
Thus there is no longer Jew nor Greek,
free nor slave,
male nor female.
For you are all one in Christ Jesus.
---Galatians 3: 27-28
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