Page 14 - LOTN Summer Issue 47 2021

EDUCATION AND FORMATION

The Resurrection,

a feminine reality

By Emeritus Abbot David-

Marc d’Hamonville OSB, of

En Calcat

omen had a key part to play on the morning extent, were handicapped, if it had something feminine
of the Resurrection. about it, was a feminine reality, something to which men
The four evangelists are unanimous, so it do not have as easy an access… a bit like when you talk
Wis therefore absolutely certain that, without about motherhood, pregnancy, breast-feeding?
these women, we have no access to the Resurrection. A poet writing of Easter says marvellously,
A group of women: Luke names three of them, and adds, This earth is light like a young woman who has just given
“and the others with them.” birth, wearing her over-large [maternity] dress. It no longer
In Jewish society in Jesus’ time, in public life, the female holds on to any of its dead. Tomorrow is Easter
half of humanity counted for nothing, with little or no (Jean-Pierre Lemaire, L’exode et la nuée, p. 177)
part to play in political life, no legal recognition, no part in This earth is light like a young girl who has given birth in
worship. her over-large dress.
So all that was left for them was private life, family life, The empty tomb, the too-large dress: it was the women
domesticity, the intimate life. Well, it is precisely that who spotted the signs of birth, the signs of life. Because
other aspect of life which is primarily concerned in the when, in Galilee, Jesus used to speak of this new life, they
Resurrection, well ahead of any public, institutional or were already a length ahead. And their language on Easter
religious aspect; where the Resurrection is concerned, the morn was already, was especially, the language of life, an
institution always arrives afterwards, Peter and the other
ten always get there afterwards.
That is a capital fact in the Christian life: for each of us,
the Resurrection begins with intimacy, just as life, any life, We all know women who have
begins in intimacy, when a woman brings a child into the given up smoking or drinking as
world. soon as they are pregnant.
Let us remind ourselves of the apostles’ reaction: what With the Risen Lord, it is exactly
the women had just told them seemed like an old wives’ the same!
tale, just a story. The disciples on the road to Emmaus has
the same reaction – “some of the women have told us…”
women’s gossip!
A disdainful reaction!
You could say that disdain for the women goes with emotion, an upsetting in their bodies so profound that
disdain for the Resurrection. they even managed to shift Peter, even though he spoke
An enduring disdain for women, let’s face it, not just of women’s tales.
within Christianity, but also outside it! The Resurrection is not a reality which we can observe
Disdain for the Resurrection has an equally long track- outside of ourselves, something like a scientific subject,
record, it goes back a long way: throughout the gospels, it is more a reality within us, to be lived, like a child to be
the evangelists constantly warn us that the apostles have brought to birth, to be nourished with our blood, with our
not the least idea what Jesus was trying to get across when flesh, with our whole life.
he was speaking about rising again. The more you recognize his life in you, the more you will
And if the Resurrection were some sort of reality in commit yourself to live for him, for this new little being
relation to which men, to differing degrees but all to some within you.

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