Camminiamo insieme
Women in the Gospel, Mirrors of Divine Mercy
Editrice Shalom
Tempo di lettura: 3 min
Autore: Editrice Shalom
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In the deepest pages of the Gospel and in the most urgent debates of the contemporary Church, a powerful and often underestimated truth resonates: the crucial and revolutionary role of women. They are not merely supporting figures, but essential co-protagonists in revealing the authentic face of God, a face of hope and mercy.
Converting our idea of God
Bruno Tarantino's book "Jesus and the Women of the Gospel" explores eight stories of women, not merely to recount them, but to show how Jesus specifically chose these figures to challenge the image of God that the religious men of his time had created and imposed, and which was evidently false. The realization that the first and most important conversion is the conversion of our idea of God is beautifully illustrated through Jesus' relationship with the female world.
In the androcentric context of his time, when women were legally considered minors, whose testimony had no value in a trial and who were regarded as men's property, Jesus acts with unprecedented radicalism. He welcomes women into his following, challenges conventions and ritual impurities, and entrusts the testimony of his resurrection precisely to a woman.
Stories of women, stories of the Gospel
Don Bruno Tarantino's book contains eight stories of women waiting to be discovered; we preview only a few of them.
Jairus's daughter and the hemorrhaging woman: these two stories are intertwined. The hemorrhaging woman, suffering for twelve years and reduced to poverty because of her condition of ritual impurity and social and economic isolation, touches Jesus' cloak with silent, desperate faith. Jesus not only heals her, but calls her to step forward, acknowledges her publicly, and calls her daughter, offering her a salvation that is the fullness of life and peace, a shalom meaning universal flourishing, completeness, and delight. In parallel, Jairus's daughter, a twelve-year-old on the verge of death, is called back to life by Jesus with surprising simplicity: She is not dead, but asleep. Jesus' act of taking the girl's hand and making himself impure in the eyes of religious people is an act of mercy that transcends the Law. He returns the girl to her parents, emphasizing that we cannot always cure the people we love, but we can always care for them.
The story of the adulterous woman: the woman is dragged into the temple by hypocritical scribes and Pharisees, who only want to put Jesus to the test in order to have a reason to accuse him. Jesus, in a prophetic gesture, writes on the ground, recalling the law written by the finger of God and his readiness to forgive. His question, Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her, exposes their hypocrisy. In the end, only the wretched woman and Jesus, mercy itself, remain. His response is not a condemnation, but a liberating invitation: Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on do not sin anymore.
The Church: called to demasculinize itself
The relevance of women does not stop at the Gospel but extends to the beating heart of the Church. Pope Francis has stated forcefully that the Church is a woman and that one of the great sins we have committed is to masculinize the Church. This is an urgent call to recognize the feminine dimension of the Church and to understand it deeply, because if we do not know how to understand what the theology of a woman is, we will never understand what the Church is.
This invitation from Pope Francis to demasculinize the Church concerns not only the presence of more women in its bodies, but a profound transformation of mentality and spirituality that recognizes and values the feminine essence intrinsic to the Church itself.
The stories of these women in the Gospel move us because they speak to us of vulnerable humanity encountering the most tender divinity. They teach us that God's mercy is not a response to sin, but a primordial love that precedes every human weakness. In its journey, the Church is called to reflect this image of God ever more faithfully, embracing and celebrating the strength, faith, and grace that blossom in the hearts of women. Only in this way can it fully accomplish its mission of proclaiming a Gospel that is good/beautiful news for the present day of each of us.
