Homily for the Sunday of the Holy Myrrhbearing Women
By Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Mechev
By Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Mechev
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit! Today’s feast is preeminently a feast of holy women. Recently it was heard from one of the sisters: "This is our feast." What a great delusion! If this is indeed a feast of women, then not of all, but only of the wise. Not all the women who lived in the days of the earthly life of Jesus Christ do we commemorate today, but only those who ministered to Him, followed Him, did not abandon Him even in the terrible moments of His sufferings and death.
We celebrate now the memory of those women who, at the hour of the burial of their Lord and Teacher, “beheld where they laid Him” (Mark 15:47). And when His most pure Body had been laid in the tomb, and the door of the tomb sealed with a stone, they did not depart, but remained, “sitting opposite the tomb” (Matt. 27:61). They came to the tomb, moved by great love for their Teacher, in order even at this last hour to minister to Him and, according to the Jewish custom, to anoint His body with spices. Not being able to fulfill their intention, but having returned home, even before the onset of the Sabbath they “prepared spices and ointments” (Luke 23:56), so that after the Sabbath rest, at the dawn of the first day of the new week, they might again go to the tomb and anoint with spices and ointment the body of Jesus. And they indeed go to the tomb “on the first of the Sabbaths,” very early, “while it was still dark” (John 20:1); they go, despite knowing that the entrance was blocked by a stone which they were not able to roll away, they go irrationally, driven by faith and love for the Crucified One, and for their great love they receive the greatest joy — the first good tidings of His Resurrection.
This is their feast, the feast of the Myrrhbearing Women above all, and together with them also of the other evangelical women who, even during the days of the earthly life of Jesus Christ, came to Him with faith and love, fell in prayer at His feet, and received from Him healings and forgiveness of sins. Behold the woman with the issue of blood, who believed that it was enough for her to touch the hem of Christ’s garment in order to receive healing (Matt. 9:20, 22); the Canaanite woman, whose daughter was healed according to her faith (Matt. 15:21, 28); the sinful woman who brought myrrh into the house of the Pharisee to anoint the feet of Christ the Savior (Luke 7:37–50). Finally, it is also the feast of all those women who in different times lived in the Church, gave to the Lord all that they had, served Him from their possessions, and above all offered to Him as a gift all that is good and beautiful with which God has endowed the woman’s soul. Truly, it can also be our feast, if in our spiritual life we follow in the footsteps of these great women.
You know that all who desire to serve Christ pass in their life through temptations and stumbling-blocks. Very great temptations were also among the holy Apostles, who passed through temptations of pride, fear, despondency. Remember how the Apostles disputed among themselves about who of them would be first in the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 20:20–28; Mark 10:35 and others), about the denial of Peter (Matt. 26:69–75), the betrayal of Judas (Matt. 26:14–16), finally, about how “the best of the Apostles” were weighed down with sleep and could not keep watch with Christ either on the Mount of Transfiguration or at the hour of His fervent prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. If such temptations were among the Apostles, then, probably, even more difficult trials had to be endured by the women who followed Christ. The holy Evangelists do not tell us about them only because in the Gospel they recount only what they themselves saw or heard.
The difficulties and temptations which the holy women encountered in life, and in general women who desire to serve Christ, differ significantly from the difficulties that stood in the path of the holy Apostles, and this is in many respects conditioned by the particular character of the woman’s soul, in contrast to the soul of a man. For a woman perceives every phenomenon of the surrounding world differently than a man. The mind of a man grasps the very essence of each matter; he is inclined to generalize all the phenomena of life, and the results of this generalization he places at the foundation of his actions. In contrast to this, a woman possesses the ability in every matter or event to see the individual details; in every person she pays attention, chiefly, to his individual characteristics, often even to trifles which a man will pass by without even noticing. And this is to a great extent explained by the fact that a woman, in her approach to life and to people, invests more feeling and warmth of soul than a man.
The particular character of the male and female soul is best understood by comparing the attitude of a father and a mother toward the upbringing of a child. The father usually outlines the general direction of the child’s upbringing and determines the principles that are laid at its foundation, but he does not always enter into the details of upbringing and does not know so well all the corners of the child’s life as the loving heart of the mother knows and sees them. This same characteristic we notice not only in the life of a mother, but in general in the life of every woman and in her attitude toward all the phenomena of life.
The path of a woman in life is the path of feeling and, above all, the path of love. It is precisely love that gives her the possibility to follow all the small details of the life of those whom she loves. For if I love, then I want to know everything about the one I love, to miss nothing of his life. This is a precious property of the woman’s soul, which can be laid as the foundation of the greatest Christian work — a loving attitude toward the people with whom the Lord has brought us together in this life. But this same feature of the woman’s soul can also be the greatest obstacle to the development of our spiritual life, since women often turn it from the foundation of Christian activity into a caricature. A loving and attentive attitude toward the small details of life they turn into pettiness, which becomes soil for the development of pride and vanity and, as a result, turns the life of those around them into a real hell.
Paul the Apostle says that a wife can save her husband, for “the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife…” (1 Cor. 7:14). The history of the Church knows many examples of such sanctification. So it was with the father of Gregory of Nazianzus, who was converted to Christ through the prayers of his wife Saint Nonna; the same was with the father of Saint Augustine of Hippo. But on the other hand, a wife can also destroy her husband. And the cause of this destruction is usually precisely the wife’s pettiness.
The image of such a “petty, quarrelsome” wife is depicted in many places in the Book of Proverbs of Solomon. In one place Solomon compares a quarrelsome wife to a “dripping gutter” (Prov. 19:13), gathering within itself all impurities and then pouring them out upon everyone. “Wise women,” as Solomon says, “build houses”; they go along the path of the salvation of the husband and the whole family. But an evil wife destroys all spiritual building, “tearing it down with her own hands” (Prov. 14:1).
Today we glorify the Holy Myrrhbearing Women for their great love for the Savior, and since love constitutes the very essence of the spiritual image of a woman, this means that we glorify them for the fulfillment of the vocation of woman. A woman, just like a man, must develop within herself those spiritual qualities that the Lord has placed in them: the man must be the head and father of the family, he must give the general direction of its life, and what is lacking in him the wife will supply, placing into the life of the family that which constitutes the seed of her own inner life. Thus, helping and completing one another, together they will fulfill the law of Christ, according to the word of the Apostle: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2).
However, in the spiritual life, where “there is neither male nor female” (Gal. 3:28), every person, whether man or woman, must, without losing the particular traits of his or her inner constitution, at the same time strive to avoid one-sidedness and, as far as possible, develop also such traits as are not natural to him or her. Thus, for example, the Holy Fathers often said that an elder — a spiritual father — must in relation to his spiritual children be not only a father but also a mother. This is especially spoken of in the instructions of Seraphim of Sarov. This means that he must, without losing his capacity for generalization, develop within himself the sensitivity and tenderness that belong chiefly to a mother in relation to her children. The same applies also to a woman, who must, without losing the qualities of soul natural to her, acquire, as far as possible, also masculine qualities. This will help her not to be lost in trifles and to guard herself from pettiness, which to such a great degree is characteristic of many women.
Saint Gregory of Nazianzus says of his mother, Saint Nonna, who was a great Christian, that she conducted family affairs with such success as though she were not engaged in spiritual labor at all, and was so pious that it seemed that household matters did not concern her at all. This is precisely what we are never able to combine. Saint Nonna attained this because she performed her household tasks as the work of Christ. In life everything consists of small things, but, dealing with them, she did not become petty; rather, she placed prayer as the foundation of her life. She was a great woman of prayer, and for this the Lord granted her a blessed end — she died in the church during prayer. Therefore her son, in one of his spiritual poems, rightly compares her to the Myrrhbearing Women celebrated today, saying that she “in no way fell short of the women of old who received… Christ, or saw Him risen from the tomb.”
Besides the Holy Myrrhbearing Women, whose memory the holy Church now celebrates, and other great and most great women who resembled them in their life, we must today also recall another image of the woman’s soul — virginal and directed toward the Heavenly Bridegroom, Christ — which the Lord gives in the Parable of the Ten Virgins (Matt. 25:1–13). Five of them were wise and five foolish. All of them, with lamps in their hands, awaited the coming of the Bridegroom in order to enter with Him into the marriage feast, but not all were able to enter, not all were able to partake of His feast. Could there be a feast for the foolish virgins at the moment when, having bought oil and returned to the chamber of the Bridegroom, they found its doors shut and heard the voice of the Bridegroom: “I do not know you”?
And, of course, there is a feast for all those who, even at the last hour, enter with Christ into the open doors of His bridal chamber; for all who, like the wise virgins, walk the spiritual path and struggle for the spiritual life. Remember that each of us has received from God a body and a soul created in the image and likeness of God, and our first task is to preserve this image unharmed. The Holy Fathers teach us not to distort this image, not to impose upon our face or our clothing an alien image, and not to strip ourselves of the image of God, not to cast it off. Do not forget that the day will come when the Lord will come and ask each of us: “Where is My image?” One must remember that the preservation of the image of God within oneself begins with the guarding of the tongue. Do not speak evil. Remember that every word you utter is not uttered in vain. It is sown in order to bear fruit.
Great fruit was borne by the word of the Holy Myrrhbearing Women: they were the first to receive from the Angel the good tidings of the Resurrection of Christ and received from Him the command: “Proclaim it to the Apostles.” And the word of preaching bore fruit unto eternal life.
Like them, Christ Risen was preached also by Saint Nina and Saint Olga of Kiev and other women equal to the Apostles. And there were also women who, like Saint Nonna — the mother of Gregory the Theologian, Emmelia of Caesarea — the mother of Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa, Monica of Hippo — the mother of Blessed Augustine, and many others, though they did not preach to tribes and nations, sowed the word of God in their families and bore fruit a hundredfold in their great sons.
Completely otherwise do many women of the present time relate to the image of God within themselves. The abilities given to them by the Lord they have turned into material for hatred, malice, and slander. They notice what men do not see, and the ability given to them to notice details they have distorted, turning it only toward seeing what is evil. Nor do they have restraint in speech, and instead of acquiring spiritual silence, they act according to the proverb: “Lips and teeth are two fences, but there is no restraint.”
If we want today truly to be a feast for you, then we must direct all our abilities toward the service of God and neighbor, because a feast does not consist in idleness, but in vigilance and in serving the Lord by word and deed. And if we truly feel today to be a feast, then let us imitate those to whom this feast is dedicated — the Holy Myrrhbearing Women in their apostolic service, in the preaching of the gospel. Whatever field the Lord has placed you in, you can always accomplish a great work — to lead living souls to Christ, to be their guardian angel, to catch in them the slightest movements and direct them toward the building up of these souls, which above all we must love in the Lord.
The work of those women who have now come into the church, and who, drawing near in heart to the tomb of the Lord, desire themselves to bring Him gifts according to their strength from their womanly soul, is above all the work of love, that love of which the Apostle says that it “believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things… never fails” (1 Cor. 13:7–8).
Can a man render worship to the Lord when he sees that everything is finished? From his point of view, the work of Jesus Christ seemed finished: for He had been crucified, buried, and a stone had been laid against His tomb. But the women, in the name of that great love which “never fails,” come to the sealed tomb to minister to the Lord laid therein, and in response to their great love they are the first to receive the news of the Resurrection of the Lord.
Imitating these greatest women and following their path, you also can not only preserve within yourselves the image of God, not only save yourselves, but also bring others to Christ. You can receive in your soul the message of the Resurrection of Christ and pass it on to others. You can by your love raise their souls from the sleep of sin and imprint upon them the image of the RISEN LORD. Amen.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
