From: joachim omolo ouko
Sunday, April 20, 2014

The main focus in today’s Gospel taken from JN 20:1-9 is on Mary of Magdala, also known as Mary Magdalene, who on the first day of the week came to the tomb early in the morning while it was still dark. She was disturbed as she saw the stone removed and the tomb was empty.

All four Gospel accounts note the empty tomb was first discovered by women. This is significant in two ways. One way it is significant is that it highlights the fear of the male disciples. Rather than visiting the tomb, they were gathered together in a locked home.

This stone, as was typical of ancient tombs, had covered the entrance. Mary Magdalene found the tomb to be empty, the body gone, and a young man within the tomb tells her that Jesus has risen. The empty tomb points to the revelation of Jesus’ resurrection.

Mary Magdalene was indeed a very courageous woman. When Jesus was crucified by the Romans, she was there supporting him in his final moments and mourning his death. She was a witness to the events that took place leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus.

The courage of Mary Magdalene to follow Jesus until his death and resurrection is not only because of what Jesus did to her by removing seven demons from her, but more so because of the respect Jesus had for women.

Apart from Mary Magdalene there are also some unnoticeable women associated with Jesus. The Gospels record several instances where Jesus reaches out to “unnoticeable” women Jesus notices them, recognizes their need.

In the three synoptic gospels, Jesus heals Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, the woman with a flow of blood, and Jairus’ daughter who had been very ill and was now at the point of death. She was an only daughter, and was twelve years of age.

Then there was a widow in a remote small town on a hillside in Galilee. Only she and her son were left of her family. He died and they were taking him to the same place where her husband was buried. Jesus noticed the grieving woman in the funeral procession. Jesus gave the command “Arise!” and gave the bewildered son back to his mother.

And when Jesus was teaching in a synagogue, he saw a woman who had been “crippled by a spirit for eighteen years.” She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. He called to the woman, said “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity, then laid his hands on her body, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.

Jesus presented women as models of faith to his listeners. In the culture of the day, women were neither to be seen nor heard since they were considered “corrupting influences to be shunned and disdained.

I am particularly pleased that Pope Francis is doing exactly this. His decision to break with the long-standing papal tradition of washing only priests’ feet is indeed a big challenge to us. He included women and non-Christians in the symbolic ceremony that took place on Holy Thursday.

This surprise began on Holy Thursday last year when he washed the feet of two women and two Muslims at a juvenile detention center in Rome. Before this, modern Popes had only ever washed the feet of 12 priests at the Vatican, during the Mass for the Last Supper.

Pope Francis is trying his level best to minister according to Jesus’ vision and mission. That is why, while marking Palm Sunday in a packed St. Peter’s Square he ignored his prepared homily and spoke entirely off-the-cuff in a remarkable departure from practice.

He did not read the homily because those who prepared for him omitted recognition of women dignity and their participation in the pastoral ministry. In his unprepared homily, Francis called on people, himself included, to look into their own hearts to see how they are living their lives.

“Has my life fallen asleep?” Francis asked after listening to a Gospel account of how Jesus’ disciples fell asleep shortly before he was betrayed by Judas before his crucifixion. “Am I like Pontius Pilate, who, when he sees the situation is difficult, washes my hands?”

Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail obolobeste@gmail.com

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