Fifth Sunday in Lent – Today’s readings: Ezekiel 37:12-14; Psalm 129 (130), 1-2, 3-4, 5-6ab, 7bc-8; Romans 8, 8-11; John 11, 1-45.
Et si Dieu avait envoyé sa fille, by Marie-Françoise Hanquez-MaincentIn Et si Dieu avait envoyé sa fille (2023), Marie-Françoise Hanquez-Maincent enquires on what the Church would have been if God had sent his daughter rather than his son! The book emerges from the author’s engagement in the Church as wife to an ordained permanent deacon, representative both in France and internationally for spouses of permanent deacons. Marie-Françoise’s publication takes inspiration from the 2003 survey among women married to permanent deacons, in the ecclesiastical province of Lille Arras and Cambrai, followed by another one in the diocese of Lille (2002). Pope Francis’s appointment, in 2016 and 2019, of a commission to examine the issue of ordained female deacons in the early Church, was also a motivating factor behind her book.
Spouses consenting their husband to pursue ordination to permanent diaconate are required to follow a four-year preparatory course. Frequently, it is there that a major question arises from these women: “at the end, what’s our share in this project which mainly concerns men?” Marie-Françoise departs from the androcentric world view passed over to the Church from antiquity. This world view maintains a hierarchical order with regard to soul (male) over body (female), having the former thought of as a more apt reflection of the divine, arguing that “if God is male, then the male is god”.
First, the author makes her way through a textual gospel analysis of the identification of God and Jesus to feminine images as well as to Jesus’s relational attention to women. She then passes on to other New Testament writings which mention influential women in the early Church. Marie-Françoise’s reflective enquiry bases itself on a sound theology of baptismal equality. Indeed, theological consideration on the issue of sexes cannot remain a minor one in the face of advances in body and gender politics.
In commenting on Jesus’s relationship with Martha and Mary, featuring in today’s gospel of the raising of Lazarus, Marie-Françoise writes about “the unbound” or “the unconfined” woman. In hindsight, moving a step forward from the author’s intention, one might argue that the ‘unbound’, ‘unconfined’ women contrast with Lazarus’s bondage in his grave clothes and confinement to his tomb.
While in the gospel of Luke, Lazarus is absent and the two sisters take a central role with Jesus’s visit, here in the Johannine narrative, it is the dead Lazarus who is the pivotal element, bringing to the fore Martha and Mary out of their house of mourning, to meet Jesus at the tomb. There, Martha, who in Luke’s gospel is dedicated to the service (diakonian) of the Lord, proclaims her faith in Jesus, echoing Peter’s profession of faith in Matthew’s gospel. On her part, Mary, who in Luke’s gospel sits down (parakathestheisa), rose up (ēgerthē) to quickly come out of the house of mourning to meet Jesus, nonetheless lamenting his absence in Lazarus’s sickness. Mary’s ‘rising up’ is indicative of an action which has more to it than simply standing up from a sitting position, which in biblical terms can, already in itself, be indicative of a prominent position of authority and influence.
May we allow God to visit our houses of mourning and tombs, to call us out, rising to fullness of life
By all counts, the raising of Lazarus narrative is a life-affirming story showing the creative force of God who breathes life in situations of death on various levels. The prophet Ezekiel had already prophesied God’s promise of opening the tombs which keep us interred, to, in turn, grant us rest in our homeland. Similarly, the Apostle’s letter to the Romans assures us that the Spirit of God, dwelling in us, fills us with life already from the here and now. Indeed, “the Gospel of life is at the heart of Jesus’s message.” (Evangelium Vitae, 1).
As we witness a pronounced struggle between the “culture of life” and the “culture of death”, may we allow God to visit our houses of mourning and tombs, to call us out, rising to fullness of life.