March is Women’s Month but its celebration started on the wrong foot. We are supposed to highlight the need for greater gender sensitivity and to recognize the contributions of women. But Congressman Bong Suntay uttered some remarks expressing his libidinal desires on the actress Anne Curtis. What was worse was that he was remorseless even after the backlash. But mind you, his behaviour, deplorable as it is, is not even the most loathsome among public officials in recent memory. The rape jokes of former President Rodrigo Duterte are too numerous to count. And who would forget that time when legislators were watching a sex video, later proven to be fake, involving Congresswoman Leila de Lima?
I would not be commenting on the misogynistic behaviour of our public officials anymore.
Instead, in celebration of Women’s Month, I would devote this space to an issue which my own educational background has made me more familiar with: women in the ministry of Jesus. What I am about to write is nothing new to those who are engaged in feminist biblical studies. Feminist biblical scholars would find this essay elementary. But this is not written for the specialists but for the lay person who often succumbs to patriarchal stereotypes, which actually cannot stand the test of biblical scholarship.
One example is the (mis)conception that all the apostles or disciples of Jesus were males. That is obviously false. First, let us make a distinction between the terms apostles and disciples. An apostle means someone who is sent. On the other hand, a disciple is a learner. Both terms were not exclusively identical to males in the ministry of Jesus. The 12 apostles were all males, but the term apostle is not limited to the 12. The Gospel of Luke says, “…he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also names apostles.” Logically, the statement does not say that only the twelve were called apostles.
In fact, today Mary Magdalene is called an apostle in official Catholic liturgy, thanks to Pope Francis. Indeed, she is an apostle to the apostle for after she encountered the resurrected Jesus, she was commissioned to announce the good news of the resurrection to the 11 remaining apostles.
Jesus also had several female disciples. Luke 8:1-2 states, “… the twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary called Magdala, from whom seven demons had come out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward and Chuza and Sussana and many others who provided for them…”
Two of her close friends were women, Martha and Mary. Today, there are still stereotypes about that a woman’s place is in the kitchen. But Jesus did not mind educating Mary, “who sat at his feet and listened to what he was saying.” And when Martha asked Jesus to tell Mary to help her, Jesus calmly replied that Mary had chosen the better part.
Jesus did not mind breaking social conventions in conversing not only with women but women who belonged to different nationalities. He had a long conversation with a Samaritan woman whose love life may have been extra colourful, having already five husbands and currently living with someone whom she is not married to. Once in the Gospel of Mark, he did not want anyone to know of his location when a Syro-Phoenician (a Canaanite in Matthew’s Gospel) approached him and the conversation was rather testy. But in the end, he acceded to the pleas of the woman.
One miracle Jesus performed was raising the dead man who was “the only son of a widowed mother.” The Bible does not say what motivated Jesus to perform the miracle for the woman herself did not ask for help. My guess is that since the dead man was the only son of a widow, Jesus knew that if he did not perform a miracle, the woman would be alone for the rest of her life.
And of course, who can forget his mother Mary. But we have often domesticated her as a paragon of docility. We have forgotten that this woman proclaimed a God who “cast down the mighty from their thrones, lifts up the lowly, fills the hungry and sends the rich empty away.” These words came not from Gabriela Silang but from the Blessed Virgin.