Meditation for the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women (Mark 15:43 – 16:8)
Today we remember the myrrh-bearing women, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, people barely mentioned in the Gospel narrative. But when it seemed that Christ had been defeated, and that death, rejection, humiliation and hatred had won, they showed faithfulness and courage: faithfulness from the heart, and the courage that is born only of love.
Everyone loves. But few dare to love others more than themselves. That is true love: daring to prefer the other to oneself. Loving is natural; but loving as the Lord wants means daring to love to the point of giving oneself.
That is how the myrrh-bearing women loved. They rose early on the first day of the week, Sunday morning, and set off for the tomb of the Lord they had served and loved, to anoint him with spices, unafraid to seek a condemned man whose tomb was sealed with a great stone and guarded by soldiers.
Who dares to love like the myrrh-bearers, or like Joseph of Arimathea, who “took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus”? (Who dares a love that may set him against the powerful of this world?) Who cares for an outcast, buys linen, takes the body down, wraps it and lays it in a new tomb? There is a love for show, the love of the majority, which abandons at the foot of the cross or weakens when the beloved is condemned, and denies him. “Love” dares for the beloved, cares for him and stays by him even in the most extreme signs of his weakness, such as death and the tomb.
It takes no courage to love the great. Courage is loving the weak. That is why the first is often hypocrisy, while the second is true love. Courage, then, is the proof of love’s authenticity. A love that takes no risk is hypocrisy. The risk may be bearing the beloved’s weakness, or the chance that he will wrong me, or daring to forgive one day, or taking a risk and giving of myself another day. This is “the joy of love”: courage. The joy of love is not consuming the beloved for oneself, but spending oneself for him.
Love goes out to the other when it dictates “duty” to us, not when reason dictates what is “possible”. Love sets out like the myrrh-bearers, even when what it wants is impossible. If we love, we will go out of ourselves when it is a duty, not only when it is possible. Love dares and does not stop at the impossible, because it will not break the duty it has embraced.
Love acts by the wisdom of faith, which people consider “foolishness”, because it accepts the risk of loss. Imperfect love does not dare the impossible because it does not want to suffer any loss. True love does not fear the impossible, whatever the loss, even its whole self. Did not “the First and the Last, who died and came to life” cry out to the angel of Smyrna, asking for sufficient love: “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life”; “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Revelation 2:10-11)? “Whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.”
Without such a love that “dares”, we cannot change any painful reality in the world whose foundations have been set firm by falsehood and lies. How did Christianity open up the pagan, domineering Roman world? Was it not by a love like that of the myrrh-bearers and Joseph? Only love of the truth can face tyrannical falsehood: a love like John the Baptist’s love for the truth, which stands before the ruler and says, “It is not lawful for you…”. In our age, seals have been set on corrupt and false principles and ideals, and our time accepts premises and generalities that no conscience accepts. But who has the love that dares to roll away this stone, or set out towards life regardless of these false seals?
Everyone acknowledges Christ’s resurrection, and that Christ is the truth. Yes, but who loves Jesus in a truth that the power of this age has buried, sealed with terror, and rolled a great stone over, made of media and falsified interests? Who will be driven by love, with fearless courage, to this buried truth?
The age of consumerism does not like us to dig up human rights. Consumerism wants to bury the freedom and existence of the other, so it can keep the freedom to take no account of people and leave them no room at all. Who has true love and dares to speak out and act for the forgotten and marginalized, the weak and oppressed, against the tyranny of self-interest and the dominance of profit at people’s expense? Courage reveals true love.
Our world, even the Christian world, takes account of the smallest details and gives every matter its time and place, but leaves “the Lord” only heaven and slogans; at best, among some “committed” people, it leaves him their “free time”, to send messages to heaven or receive imaginary messages from him. Who has a perfect love that will clear many, many things from the ground of life and society to leave the Lord some space, some place? Courage will prove such love.
There is a love that seeks itself and a love that gives itself. There is a love that wants the security of gain and a love that risks giving. The first changes no bad reality; the second is not deterred by reality and achieves the impossible. A love that dares is our only means of bearing witness to life in a materialistic world. A love without courage will not look for life in a tomb; the news of the resurrection will not reach it; and it will not remember the Lord’s word, though it seems foolish: “Take heart, I have overcome the world.” The Lord spoke these words, meaning his resurrection, at a time when the world did not believe in it. A love like that of Joseph and the myrrh-bearers will receive the news of the resurrection. Only such a “daring” love can raise every truth that people have written off and that has died for them. There is no truth that is not alive, but we will carry such a love only when we decide to accept it even if it costs us our whole selves. Daring love is the only love worthy of the news of the resurrection, and it will taste the joy of the Lord’s kingdom, which never sets.
Fr. Gerard Abi Saab
