Friday September 22, 2017
Every morning of life Jewish men gave thanks to God for not having been born Gentiles, nor slaves, nor women. The power of the revolution unleashed by Jesus is seen at one remove in St. Paul, who (though he never knew Jesus in the flesh) could write, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). It takes nothing less than an inner revolution to bring a person to deny, phrase by phrase, the prayer he or she learned as a child. Try to imagine doing that to the Our Father or the Hail Mary! I find it impossible to imagine.
A rabbi would not be seen speaking to a woman in public; a strict one would not even be seen speaking to his own wife. But Jesus was followed around the country by a mixed band of men and women. Compounding it, he even spoke with Gentile women: the Samaritan woman and the Syro-Phoenician woman.
Luke’s Gospel: particularly teems with women: it is in Luke that we read of Elizabeth, and Anna, and the widow of Naim, and the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee; it is Luke who gives us the scene of Jesus in the house of Mary and Martha. And see the litany of names in today’s reading. Scholars say that Luke was probably from Macedonia, where women were more emancipated than elsewhere.
