Women, Myrrh

In recent days I have been in a mixture of adventures, preparing to come for a visit to New Zealand, while in the midst of the church calendar, finishing Christmas and the Epiphany upon us. 

For me the Epiphany has special meaning as so often falls on my birthday I hold onto the homily like sweet water to carry me another year. I was meant to be born on Christmas day, so my mothers story tells me, she use to say that I was a child that works in my own time and when that time comes, boy do I deliver. I believe the Lord knew that I would lose a little of myself if I was born on Christmas Day, I often wonder if I was born on this day if I would ever really have investigated the meaning of Christ-mas, or just accepted the day for what it would be titled. 

Last night I sat in mass next to this wonderful young girl, who is growing up so fast. In the short time that I have known her, I have realised just how much she has blossomed, its touching to witness. 

We were talking about putting away the Christmas decoration and why at church they were still singing christmas carols. Leading us to broke open the meaning of the song “On the last day of Christmas, my True Love gave to me…. “

Listening to our priest homily, that far from delivered, I walked away firstly praying that his lingering words would fall upon deaf ears, not wanting his influence on the beauty that is so young - especially that was sitting next to me. Plus I felt like  screaming into his heart “On the last day of Christmas, my True Love gave to me… a beautiful vision of women” 

How blessed am I to have my life surrounded by women! I do realise its most likely as I am one, however a vision of women across the world I refer to here in our song, those who are not only flesh and blood, those who are here in my little Catholic neck of the woods. The handful of women who stand in the foggy mirror with me to tell me what they see. They are the ones who sing the sweetest songs to Jesus, no doubt the ones who would run with me - even from tombs, from the shadows - to announce resurrection. Women are everywhere, young, coming of age, wiser, more earthed and some who are just joyful rays of sunshine.

You see, looking at the Christian calendar, on the 6th, is the last day of Christmas, and the Epiphany. Before I get told no, the church calendar brought it to the Sunday therefore we celebrate this weekend; however the Orthodox Christmas celebrated the 6th as on the Epiphany. All Im trying to say, is that we are about to have a collective ah-ha moment, an awakening to Jesus as the Son of God, born to a women as one of us. One with us! 

If for a moment we open our eyes to different cultures, women are still very much suppressed. With all the wisdom that has gone before us and present with us, all the history books, the stories, tradition and so forth we still seem to lack at times the acknowledgment of the importance and significance of women in society even in one and another lives. 

Have you ever thought its strange.... I mean, Im taken back that some cultures suppress women then on the next breath they say they are very devotional to Mary… 

Did I miss something??

Was Mary not a women? Is the message that Mary is in the past and not here, that no one can be like Mary, that Mary purpose was only to bear Jesus and then be forgotten until you need to pray for something, or want to use Mary for a inter sector... Im sorry did I miss something????

"When unto Mary a child was born" a very common Christmas quote, found on cards, in carols, wrapping paper with the heavy important message - so was the declaration of God’s love for us all, because we all came this way, even from the underside of a women, which must mean that even after all the systems of the world have claimed us under their "powers" - though they have been built on our backs and through our wombs - even after all the bad fruit we have eaten and bore, God must have a different idea of us. When Jesus was born of Mary, God was born of a women, and this is EPIPHANY that causes wise men to bow down with most exquisite gifts. 

He must have loved us so. 

Myrrh was one of the gifts they brought, and it is a perfume, an incense, and a medicine. When people harvest myrrh, they wound the trees repeatedly to bleed them. 

As Jesus grew to be a man, I wonder what Mary did with the myrrh. Did she open it once in a while? Did she use it to clean a wound of her own? She must have been created, like the rest of us, with the capacity of God. Mary literally knew her capacity for God, the swell of her abdomen and the blood and water that came forth with His arrival. She certainly had a wound, multiple wounds. Imagine the talk of the town. Imagine, men, what kind of countercultural statement you would have to make to stand at the gate with Mary. 

We don’t have to give birth to know what this says about God’s love for women and about our place in His kingdom. The word of God implanted into her, and no man had a thing to do with it - just saying!! - but the Holy Spirit must have spoken to the men who needed to know - to Joseph and to the wise men and even to the infant John the Baptist. There were men who kept her safe and made a way for her to do the work she was called to do. These are the men privilege to witness Messiah as a women’s son. What a privilege!! 

When Jesus had breathed his last, Joseph of Arimathea asking for his body and prepared him for burial using myrrh. Nicodemus was a myrrh bearer as well, but there were also four Marys and Joanna, Salome, and Susanna. These are the women who ministered to Jesus from their own resources, and these women were eyewitnesses to his return after death. They were sent to go tell the Apostles, and since an apostle is “one who is sent” or “messenger”, maybe in a sense they were apostles to the apostles. Maybe that’s a leap, but they were no doubt ministers and great leaders in the church. 

They went to the tomb with their myrrh and their spices, and Jesus was not there dead. He had risen, so what did they do with the myrrh then? Maybe they took it back home and put it on the shelf, but I like to believe you could smell these women before you could see them, that even before they came shouting, there was a sense in the air that something was coming and it was good. It was a women. And she knew Jesus, and she smelled like a prayer. 

And she went on having babies, and now here we all are, all of us still bearing the myrrh. 

Women of Christ the King, let’s celebrate Epiphany like its a day that makes the powers of this world bend their glad, weak their knees. Let’s celebrate Epiphany like we are women with a message!!

For me today, as I pray for all those who are suppressed, those who are put down, not only by words spoken, by jokes, by stereotypes, by ‘cultural norms’ or actions, I pray for all women not to listen to these false messages that they embrace the gift Mary has presented to us. Her example and physical womb nurtured something that all our flesh and blood can labour. 

Lets never forget - 

Kingdom Come.