The event that myrrh-bearing women experience on the Sunday of Christ's Resurrection is an example that also helps us understand how God's grace works in our spiritual life and in our pathway toward meeting Him.
Most of the time, the example of myrrh-bearing women is taken in a practical sense, that is, the myrrh-bearing women represent those who serve in the Church and are dedicated to the community by serving at tables (the example of Martha), a female diakonia. This is reinforced even by the reading this Sunday from the Book of Acts 6, 1-7 which presents the election of the seven deacons in order to serve at the tables. They elected and designated to this task so that the Holy Apostles do not neglect the vocation for which they were chosen and sent, that is, the ministry of the Word, that is, the proclamation of the Gospel — the death and resurrection of the Savior Jesus Christ for us and for our salvation. There is nothing wrong with this image of the women helping with their service at the table in favor of the community of the Apostles. It shows rather a good organization and an ‘efficient human resources strategy’, few then, but with a lot of enthusiasm and a strong living faith. The Holy Apostle Paul says, “For God is not the author of confusion but of peace.” (1 Corinthians 14:33). This apparent detail of the New Testament indicates that the apostolic Christian community together with the other disciples, myrrh-bearing women, brothers in the faith, etc. in which the inspiration of the Holy Spirit works, they are shaped by His good order, as the Great Apostle explains in the introduction to the verse quoted above. The inspiration of the Spirit maintains order and arranges vocations in the perspective of eternity following also a practical direction. The two - eternity and practical efficiency are not contradictory to each other but rather complement each other in a hierarchy of priorities that proves precisely the realism and historical value of God's plan for our salvation.
But I would also like to focus on another detail of the morning of the Savior's resurrection. The Gospel according to St. Mark reads: “Now when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, that they might come and anoint Him. Very early in the morning, on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen. And they said among themselves, ‘Who will roll away the stone from the door of the tomb for us?’ But when they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away—for it was very large.” (Mark 16: 1-4). St. Mark presents the concern of the myrrh-bearing women who, knowing the haste with which everything has been done at the burial of their Master, were eagerly heading for the tomb where He had been laid to accomplish what it was due. However, St. Mark shows us that women's concerns had already been resolved. The path to the place where the Body of the One they had seen buried three days ago had been opened in a mysterious way, independent of and beyond their efforts.
St. Matthew comes with a supplement to what St. Mark said: “And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat on it.” (Matthew 28:2). The concern of myrrh-bearing women is solved by the intervention of God. The angel of the Lord intervenes again as we see it countless times in the Old Testament and open the way in the direction of the divine plan prophesised and promised ahead. God cares whenever there is an obstacle to helping out in fulfilling His plan for us. We see that He who puts all things properly for our benefit is God Himself through His servants — the heavenly powers. Myrrh-bearing women have zeal, faith, and a sense of duty to fulfill, which ultimately means love for the Savior Jesus Christ. The latter, that is love, is the vehicle that brings them around the event of the encounter with the dead and risen Jesus Christ. The path to this experience is opened by God Himself through His heavenly angels. It is the love of God that overwhelms us first with its liberating and comforting force and that is freely given to us. Then the work of God is a graceful work that goes beyond the mere human power and imagination but that requires to a certain extent, however small, faith and openness to God.
‘Is it from the door of the sepulcher, or of your own hearts? – St. Peter Chrysologus says. From the tomb, or from your own eyes? You whose heart is shut, whose eyes are closed, are unable to discover the glory of the open grave. Pour then your oil, if you wish to see that glory, not on the body of the Lord, but on the eyes of your hearts. By the light of faith, you will then see that which through the deficiency of faith now lies hidden in darkness.’[1]
For St. Peter Chrysologus, the oil of myrrh-bearing women is the symbol of the spiritual oil necessary for our inner awakening to the knowledge and encounter with God. Our inner man says the saint needs healing, liberation and strengthening. He who is blind and does not see the spiritual reality of the Lord's resurrection is the inner man. The heart and inner eyes need liberation and healing. And this deliverance and healing begins with faith. It is the one who keeps the mind, the eyes, the heart of man open to the gracious work of God, the angel of the Lord, the angel of light, who descends and makes them all clear, transparent and luminous. The darkness of ignorance and doubt has its origin in a deficient faith or unbelief.
“And an angel descended and rolled back the stone – St. Peter Chrysologus says. He did not roll back the stone to provide a way to escape for the Lord but to show the world that the Lord had already risen. He rolled back the stone to help his fellow servants believe, not to help the Lord rise from the dead.”[2]
The angel of the Lord is working to reveal the mystery of our salvation which is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. The work of the angel of the Lord is for the benefit of the human persons. Christ does not need it because He is God without sin and is beyond the laws of this world. The stone on the door of the tomb is the sinful will and impure thoughts of man. They distort sight and understanding and divert action to purposes that are not according to God. The wall of sinful will and inappropriate thoughts must be set aside for the light of resurrection to rise from that grave that represent every person. Christ has entered the tomb of our person through Baptism and is waiting for the door of the sinful will to be set aside so that the grace of the risen Christ may enlighten everything.
“Pray, brothers, - St. Peter Chrysologus urge us - that the angel would descend now and roll away all the hardness of our hearts and open up our closed senses and declare to our minds that Christ has risen, for just as the heart in which Christ lives and reigns is heaven, so also the heart in which Christ remains dead and buried is a grace.”[3]
The angelic work comes to offer its help to start our liberation - heart, senses and mind. The heart is the spiritual center of man in which all the spiritual and psychological functions of man meet. It is the one to be transfigured by grace passing it from passionate hardeness to suppleness and elegance full of energy and life. The senses must open to heavenly and spiritual work. They remain closed to the work of God through Christ as long as they are oriented toward the secular and horizontal dimension, toward the material world. It is the mind that start healing, get strengthened, and becomes bold through the reception and contemplation of the light of Christ's resurrection, and by this, beginning to understand and perceive the way God created and endowed it to distinguish, weigh, orient, and coordinate all the work of man in the service of God and neighbor.
The heart of man is like the tomb in the Garden of Gethsemane where Christ was placed. It, which is the spiritual center of man, can remain opaque, becoming a tomb that hides in and keeps Christ inside, Who cannot work through the words and deeds of man because the heart, senses and mind are closed in the horizontality of the world here. A little faith or the unbelief does not allow grace to collaborate with man's will to open and progressively transfigure him. But the human heart can also become heaven when Christ is let out of its depths through the senses, the soul and the mind through collaboration with the will of man, manifesting itself concretely through words and deeds. This is how man can be tomb or heaven depending on how he let himself be or not to be transformed by the grace of God through the opening that faith offers.
The event of the myrrh-bearing women coming to the tomb reveals to us the way in which God cares for man in opening his way to Him. He is the One who accomplishes through His angelic powers what is impossible or unimaginable by man. At the same time, man needs, as in the case of myrrh-bearing women, faith, zeal and love for God, so that He may find the door of faith open and thus be able to enter and work with man. The result of this work is the joy of discovering the good news of Christ's resurrection and the eagerness and zeal to make it known to all for salvation and eternal life.
Christ is risen!
+Ioan Casian
[1] Peter Chrysologus. Sermon 82 in Thomas C. Oden & Christopher A. Hall (eds.). Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (New Testament II / Mark). Ed. InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, Illinois USA 1998 p 241-242 col. 1-2
[2] Peter Chrysologus. Sermons 75.4 in Thomas C. Oden (ed.). Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (New Testament Ib / Matthew 14-28). Ed. InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, Illinois USA 2002 p 306 col. 1
[3] ibidem
