This week our Church celebrates several amazing women saints: St. Mary Magdalene, the “apostle of the Apostles” (July 22); St. Anne, the grandmother of Jesus (July 26); and Sts. Martha and Mary, the sisters of Lazarus (July 29).
In many ways, these women were quite different from each other. Mary Magdalene is well-known from Scripture (though our apparent familiarity with her is a bit deceiving: throughout the centuries, there has been some debate about whether she is the same as the “sinful woman” who washed Jesus’s feet with her hair in Luke 7, who may or may not have been the adulteress Jesus saved from stoning in John 7, who may or may not have been Mary of Bethany, Lazarus’s sister, who may or may not have also been a reformed prostitute). Though the Church now at least distinguishes between Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the “sinful woman” of Luke 7, what we know about Mary Magdalene for sure is that she was cured of seven demons by the Lord and afterwards became a devoted disciple who stayed by His side even when the men fled. She was the first to see Him risen and announced the news to the Apostles.
We know less about St. Anne, who is unmentioned in Scripture but who is, according to tradition, the mother of Mary. Her story mirrors that of Hannah, mother of Samuel, in the Old Testament. Unable to bear a child for many years, Anne’s prayers were answered when she finally conceived the girl who was to become the mother of God. In gratitude Anne and Mary’s father, Joachim, offered their daughter to God’s service at a young age - an act which the Church commemorates as the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin.
Like Mary Magdalene, Sts. Martha and Mary are well-attested in Scripture, but, unlike her, they were homebodies, not known to have strayed too far from their hometown in Bethany, where they lived with their brother Lazarus. They are remembered for being models of the active and contemplative life respectively (Luke 10), and for their faith in the midst of their grief when their brother Lazarus had died (John 11).
A woman healed from spiritual illness. An elderly mother and grandmother. Two loving but rivalrous sisters. All saints, and all models of holiness for us. So what can we learn from them about a life of discipleship?
This is likely an inexhaustible question. But I think one thing they all reflect is that a life of discipleship is a life of intimate friendship with the Lord. For all of them, Jesus was not a distant figure too intimidating to approach. He was their close friend - a friend with whom they felt familiar enough to share even the most mundane and perhaps even the most embarrassing moments of their lives. Anne, as his grandmother, must have known Jesus as a child; we can imagine her rocking Him in the night, changing His diapers, playing games with Him, bandaging His scraped knees. Mary Magdalene allowed Jesus to see her in the midst of what must have been a humiliating episode of spiritual and mental breakdown. Martha and Mary felt so comfortable around him that they even seem to scold him when He didn’t do what they thought he should. ("Don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?” Martha complains in Luke, while in John Mary insists, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died!”)
Their intimate friendship with the Lord reflects their deep trust that they could let Jesus see the messy realities of their lives - and that He would love them and care about them. And Jesus did care. He cared about everything from the big problems (infertility, mental and spiritual illness, death of a loved one) to the small ones (sibling rivalries and arguments about chores). Nothing was too trivial, embarrassing, or shameful, for them to share with Him - not even their complaints about what they felt was His unfairness. They held nothing back.
To follow the example of these holy women, then, means allowing Jesus to enter into our lives - into our suffering (no matter how ashamed we may be of our pain), into our family squabbles, into our grief, even into our frustration with God and His ways. It means not holding back from the Lord, and never thinking that our problems are too petty or too embarrassing to trouble Him with. If something bothers us, He wants us to talk to Him about it. This is simply another way of saying: we must have faith - faith that Jesus loves us and cares enough about us to care for every part of us. For what else is faith but accepting Jesus’s offer of loving friendship? And like a good friend, Jesus longs to share our lives with us and to care for us. Our job is simply to let Him.
These women also show us that when we do allow Jesus to be our friend, He transforms our circumstances and situations. He is not just a shoulder to cry on; He has the power to work miracles. These women were keenly aware that though Jesus longs for us to be comfortable enough with Him to bring Him our problems, this is not a friendship of equals: Jesus is, as Martha says in her great proclamation of faith, “the Messiah, the Son of God Who has come into the world.” Our intimate friendship with Jesus does not negate the fact that He is God, Creator of the universe, with the power to cast out demons, answer our prayers, cure disease, and raise the dead to life. He is the One with the power to turn our tears of sorrow into cause for joy. He is the One we joyfully recognize with Mary Magdalene as our Rabboni - our Master and our Lord.
And when such transformation and healing occur, the only proper response is the response these women had: gratitude, expressed through a life of service to the Lord. They each expressed their gratitude differently: Mary Magdalene left her old life behind to follow Christ wherever He went, even to the cross and tomb; Anne devoted her longed-for child to the Lord’s service; and Martha and Mary gave Him the gifts of their active hospitality and their loving contemplation. These different offerings reflect their different personalities and states of life, reminding us that God doesn’t ask us to give what we don’t have. But they each gave the best of what they had. And we, too, are called to give what we have to the Lord in gratitude for His abundant gifts to us.
The very fact that God Himself desires such intimacy with us is a cause for wonder. The women we honor this week should inspire us with the confidence that we need to approach Him with familiarity, yet with the humble awareness that He is our Creator and Savior. When we have such faith, we can rest assured that Jesus - Who wants to use His power to serve us and save us - will enter into our lives and transform them. What else can we do but respond as they did: with complete self-giving gratitude and love? Such is the life of discipleship and friendship with Jesus.
Cover image:
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, The Morning of the Resurrection, oil on wood, 1882-1886, Tate Museum. Photo © Tate, image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported).
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