Women, the first Easter witnesses
We are often lured by ostentatious displays of power instead of the most resilient; we confuse seeming enthusiasm with the power of fidelity
Easter recalls God’s saving power – as first experienced by Mediterranean women who dared to stay by Jesus’ side through death unto life
Every year, Christians retell their most sacred narrative of how Christ is Saviour. How Jesus, a Jewish itinerant teacher and healer, came to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover with his disciples, but instead, after sharing his last supper with them, was betrayed and abandoned by his own. How his people arrested him and turned him over to Roman occupiers to be tortured, crucified and buried hastily.
For Jesus’s public followers, devout Jews who celebrated how God saved his chosen people, Passover becomes shrouded in terror, shame and the stench of death. But just as all seemed finished, women who went to anoint his corpse were astounded to discover an empty tomb.
What happens next is tremendous: Jesus’s disciples witness him risen, his body still bearing crucifixion scars. But emboldened by his spirit, they hide no more. Instead, they proclaim him Messiah, saviour of the world and conqueror of death.
The story has echoed since, and its power still rekindles in every heart that experiences death’s sting of despair. The resurrection is very real when one touches the abyss of Hades; when one triumphs over the unspeakable – and not through their own power, but through a force that can only be described as grace. Christians are Easter people because they know that evil and its horror do not have the last word.
Mary of Magdala was the first to proclaim: “Christ is risen”
Still, elements to this story continue to disturb us. There is a polarity between Jesus’s public followers and his invisible ones; between the betrayal of those he chose as the “new Israel” and the devotion of those who choose to follow him even to his tomb; between fear that blinds and love that dares to witness.
The facts retold are evocative: Peter betrayed him; Judas sold him; the Twelve hid in his hour of torment. But wailing women accompanied him to Golgotha; stood with his mother under his cross; prepared ointment to tend to his dead body; and Mary of Magdala was the first to proclaim: “Christ is risen.”
We are often lured by ostentatious displays of power instead of the most resilient; we confuse seeming enthusiasm with the power of fidelity.
Several women from different Mediterranean cultures make it to Gospel narratives. We encounter them as shamed publicly but honoured by the Teacher; we see the despair that tortured them reborn in the clarity of his love; we witness their newfound truth spoken through powerful gestures that made them the first apostles because they were beloved disciples. Centuries of patriarchy might have kept their stories to the periphery of our consciousness. But their heroism of resilience, connection and love speaks powerfully today.
It is appropriate that these stories of Mediterranean women remain at the backdrop of a much-needed conversation that Pope Francis invites us to start in Malta. ‘Women in the Mediterranean’ is the theme of a conference being held on Sunday, April 27 at 4pm at the Mediterranean Conference Centre, Valletta.
Women in Malta take part in this complex legacy of shame, exclusion and silencing; but also of resilience, connection and love, manifested powerfully in the hiddenness of the resurrection glowing through their personal transformation. Easter recalls God’s saving power as first experienced by Mediterranean women who dared to stay by Jesus’s side through death unto life.
nadia.delicata@maltadiocese.org
Nadia Delicata is episcopal delegate for evangelisation of the Malta archdiocese.