“Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down at the well. It was about noon. A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus began talking with her.” “His disciples returned, and were shocked that he was talking with a woman.” Dehumanizing women was a routine ancient practice. It remains a routine current practice. One…
“Some Sadducees came” to Jesus and made a harmful patriarchal assumption about women, also children, “If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother.” The harmful patriarchal assumption is that women are controlled by men as property. Under patriarchy, women…
“Jesus said to the crowds: ‘This is how it is with the Community of God; it is as if a farmer were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and through it all the seed would sprout and grow, but the farmer knows not how. Of its…
On this fourth Sunday in Advent we share in the lives of two women, Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, both soon to give birth to sons. In communion with them, we too feel an “infant in (our) womb leap for joy” and we too are “filled with the Spirit.” Together, we wonder “how does…
Sunday’s readings celebrate John the Baptist and the sanctity of his life. They speak much of wombs; “The Lord called me…from my mother’s womb.” The Lord “formed me as his servant from the womb.” “(Y)ou knit me in my mother’s womb.” “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant (John) leaped in her womb.” It…
This Sunday’s Gospel identifies Jesus as promoting women’s liberation. He does so by promoting communion. Communion is a life-giving power. It the relationship model Mary witnesses for Jesus and Jesus passes on. The life-giving power of communion is a relationship model some misunderstand or perhaps fear. Thus, when Jesus witnesses life-giving communion in today’s…