Fr. Peter Stravinskas
In His own time, Jesus broke many cultural barriers, including in his relationships with women. Contrary to Jewish custom and law in the first century A.D., Jesus spoke to women in public, for example to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well in John 4:1-30. In this same passage, Jesus “defiled” Himself by drinking water from a vessel used by the Samaritan woman.[1]
Jesus accepted women as His disciples and taught them together with His male disciples according to Matthew 14:21 and 15:38. Among Our Lord’s best friends in whose house He often stayed were Martha and Mary, the sisters of Lazarus whom He raised from the dead (cf. Jn 11:1-44; 12:1-11). He referred to activities typical of a woman’s daily life as metaphors for the life of the Kingdom of God: a woman baking bread (Lk 13:20-21), a woman grinding corn (Lk 17:35), a woman sweeping her house to find a lost coin (Lk 15:8-10). Jesus allowed a woman with a hemorrhage to touch Him which rendered Him impure according to the Law, and yet He healed her (Lk 8:43-48). He willed that Mary Magdalene to be the “apostle to the Apostles,” as the Eastern Church puts it (Jn 20:11-18).
Despite Jesus’ willingness and ability to transcend so many cultural barriers in his lifetime, including those that hemmed in the dignity and role of women in society, Our Lord did not choose even His closest and best female disciples, namely, His Most Holy Mother, Mary, and Mary Magdalene, to be among His first priests and bishops ordained at the Last Supper. However, the historical Jesus (that is, the Jesus of the four canonical Gospels) never taught about males and females the absurd and bizarre notions attributed to Him in the collection of so-called sayings of Jesus found in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas. Consider saying #144, which has Simon Peter imploring Jesus: “Let Mary [Magdalene] leave us, for women are not worthy of life,” with the Gnostic Jesus responding, “I myself shall lead her [Mary Magdalene] in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
As can readily be seen, the Church from time immemorial has promoted the status of women (in spite of assertions to the contrary) according to nature and nature’s God.
[1] The Samaritan woman was “doubly disenfranchised” from a Jewish perspective: first, because she was a woman; second, because she belonged to the Samaritans who were theologically heterodox and had intermarried, thereby “polluting” the Jewish identity.