Women in the company of Jesus

Friday,
September 20, 2019
Friday, 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time
First Reading:
1 Tim 6: 2c- 12
GOSPEL: Luke 8:1-3
Jesus walked through towns and countryside, preaching and giving the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve followed him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and diseases: Mary called Magdalene, who had been freed of seven demons; Joanna, wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward; Suzanna and others who provided for them out of their own funds.
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
We need to revisit the struggles of women to appreciate today’s Gospel. It was only in 1974 that the world saw a woman president for the first time in the person of Marma Estela ‘Isabel’ Martinez Cartas de Peron of Argentina. She merely took over from her deceased husband though. The world’s first elected woman president came only in 1980 in the person of Vigdis Finnbogadsttir of Iceland. In Philippine history, it took two popular uprisings for the country to see women occupying the presidency, namely Corazon Aquino (1986) and Gloria Arroyo (2001).
Today women are better recognized. This was not so in the time of Jesus. Women were considered so low that a strict rabbi would not even talk to his wife. A husband dissatisfied with his wife could simply scribble a notice of divorce and the divorce would be final and executory. People, including the women themselves grew up with the idea that women were second-class citizens. It was this mentality that Jesus tried to change.
We see the revolutionary in Jesus when he gave critiques a double whammy by talking to one who was not only a woman but also a Samaritan. He even asked for water from this Samaritan woman. Earlier he had allowed one who was not only a woman but was also a public sinner to cry at his feet.
He even granted her instant forgiveness. In today’s Gospel he was seen in the company not just of one but many women. He even gave them the status of co-evangelizers. In support of this crusade St. Paul wrote to the Galatians: There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female; for ye all are one man in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:28).
The Philippines has improved a lot on the issue of gender sensitivity. The downside of it all is that what our women are gaining in their struggle for equality with men, some of them may be losing by descending from the altars to which men have enshrined them. Would that they realize that their cause is best fought to the finish from the higher grounds of the traditional values they were raised! – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.