Daily Reading
First Reading
1 Corinthians 15:12-20
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.
Psalm
Psalm 118:1b-2, 16ab-17, 28
Hear a just cause, O Lord; attend to my cry;
give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit.
I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God;
incline your ear to me, hear my words.
Wondrously show your steadfast love,
O savior of those who seek refuge
from their adversaries at your right hand.
Guard me as the apple of the eye;
hide me in the shadow of your wings.
Gospel Reading
Luke 8:1-3
Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.
Reflection
Friends, our Gospel today celebrates the female disciples of Jesus. One of the principal marks of Jesus’s teaching is the overturning of social conventions. In service of what he calls the kingdom of God, God’s way of ordering the world, he says and does all sorts of outrageous things.
And one of the most striking and surprising of Jesus’s moves is a radical inclusion of women. He allows women into his inner circle (practically unheard of for a rabbi). He speaks publicly to the woman at the well. He engages with the Syrophoenician woman. He forgives the woman caught in adultery. And the first witnesses of the resurrection are women.
Luke, who told this story, was a companion of Paul, and his Gospel reflects many of Paul’s themes. Paul famously says that in Christ, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female.” This was very radical stuff in those times, for these were some of the most basic social divisions of the ancient world. Free men were a lot better off than slaves, Jews had huge advantages over Greeks, and males were seen as superior to females. But not anymore—not in light of the kingdom of God that Jesus announces.
Given all of this, can we see these women disciples as forerunners of all of the great women who have followed Jesus over the centuries? Can we see them as prototypes of Teresa of Avila, Joan of Arc, Clare of Assisi, Thérèse of Lisieux, Teresa of Kolkata, Katharine Drexel, Edith Stein, and Dorothy Day?