Women at the foot of the cross

Sometimes you discover your purpose when you start looking where no one else was looking.

It has been eight years since I began the adventure of studying theology. There, between notes, desks and hours of reading, a simple and, at the same time, uncomfortable question stuck in my mind: where are the women?

They hardly ever appeared. When they did, it was like a quick mention, a single name, a note in the margin. And not because they had not been there -of course they were-, but because we had not learned to look where they lived; there, in the margins of the story, holding everything in silence.

That discomfort was the beginning of a path that made me start looking for them with determination, stopping at their names, letting their stories speak to me. What began as an academic concern ended up becoming a mission. With time I understood that one of the purposes that God was sowing in my life was precisely to make the women of the Bible known.

I began to share it in networks, to prepare courses and materials, to accompany other people in this discovery. And again and again I have seen that when someone approaches the Word with this gaze - be it a man or a woman - something ignites inside. As we listen to their voices, we begin to find our own. In knowing their committed lives, we begin to recognize our purpose.

Conversion

This year, during Lent, that word has once again resonated strongly in my prayer: purpose. What am I letting the Lord do with my life? Where is he calling me to love?

But I have understood that there is no purpose without true conversion. Not a superficial conversion, of external gestures, but of the heart. “Rend your hearts, not your garments.” (Joel 2:13), we heard during Ash Wednesday. We can live a faith of fulfillment, of well-done routines, and yet have a life far from God. True conversion is always born of an encounter with Christ, with his love that reorders everything.

In this, our women of the Gospel are an example. First, they meet Jesus and their lives are changed. This conversion sets them in motion to actively follow him. They accompany him, they serve him, they support the mission with what they have - their time, their goods, their life. And finally, they receive a purpose: to announce, to sustain, to remain, to transmit.

Conversion and resurrection

Mary of Magdala, Joanna, Susanna, Mary of Clopas, Salome, Martha of Bethany, Mary of Bethany. Names perhaps brief, or overlooked, or not done justice to, but deeply faithful lives. 

Lives that remind us that conversion is permanent: not only because it never ends and is always calling for a new “yes”, a new beginning, a renewal of the heart; but also because, when it is real, it remains. And we see this clearly during Holy Week, at the foot of the cross. Failure, silence and fear have settled in. They remain even though they have no answers and no power to change what is happening. 

Those who follow Jesus know that the cross is part of the journey, but also that it does not have the last word. It is precisely in self-giving that the heart is enlarged for the Resurrection. That is why it is not by chance that the Risen One manifests himself first to them. In a culture in which their testimony had no legal value, God entrusts the most important news in history to a group of women. To those who lived a true and permanent conversion. 

As we contemplate them by the cross, we understand that the purpose of a life is not born of success or having all the answers. It springs from a transformed heart that chooses to remain with Christ when all is darkened.

And from that place - from the meaninglessness of the cross - God continues to entrust his mission to the world.