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- Jesus was in touch with his anima
- By dying and rising for us, Jesus liberated women as
well as men
- Representing Christ’s full personality
requires representing also his feminine traits
- As a giver of life, Christ is more feminine than
masculine
Jesus was in touch with his
anima
Jung
has rightly pointed out that every woman has a ‘male side’ to her
personality, which he called the animus, and every man a ‘female
side’, his anima. This is an important fact to remember when we
discuss Christ’s personality as a male.
Some
men are more conscious of, and sensitive to, their anima. From a study
of the Gospel it is clear that Jesus Christ possessed a great sensitivity to
women and to the feminine traits in his own personality.
When
we try to reconstruct Jesus’ attitude to women, we detect an awareness of
their presence among his audience. Jesus draws his examples from the life of
women, no less than from the life of men. He knows that women keep their
treasures in boxes, and that they light a lamp at dusk (Matthew 6,19-21 and
5,15-16). He speaks of children playing in the market place and of girls
waiting for the bridegroom at a wedding (Matthew 11,16-19 and 25,1-13). He
often tells his parables in pairs, with a story about a woman running parallel
to a story about a man:
- the housewife
who mixes leaven in the dough/ the farmer who plants a mustard seed (Luke
13,18-21);
- the woman who
lost a coin/ the shepherd who lost a sheep (Luke 15,3-10);
- the widow
pestering the judge/ the friend waking up his neighbour at night (Luke 11,5-13
and 18,1-8).
We
can be sure that Mary, Jesus’ mother, had a great influence on him. Jesus
learned many of his ideals from her. She must have encouraged him when he began
his public ministry. A trace of this has been recorded in the Gospel of John.
During the wedding at Cana it was Mary who urged him to perform his first
miracle. ‘My hour has not yet come’, Jesus protested. But when she
quietly insisted, he changed his mind and ushered in the messianic era by
turning water into wine (John 2,1-12).
At
various crucial stages in his own development Jesus gained insights and was
prompted to action through encounters with women.
- When the woman
who suffered of a flow of blood touched Jesus from behind, ‘he perceived
in himself that power had gone forth from him’. Perhaps, Jesus’
healing ministry took its beginning from such encounters (Mark
5,21-43).
- The
Syro-Phoenician woman pleaded with Jesus to drive the demon from her daughter.
Jesus refused because he felt his mission was restricted to his own people.
However, the woman argues with him; and Jesus gives in, thus making a first
step on the way to his universal mission (Mark 7,24-30).
- In the house of
Mary and Martha Jesus meets, perhaps for the first time, a woman who, like the
men who sit at his feet, wants to be a disciple. Jesus is impressed by this and
encourages her ‘discipleship’ even if it runs counter to conventional
expectations of a woman’s role (Luke 10,38-42; see also 8,1-3).
Jesus
also responded to the silent gestures of women: the repentant prostitute who
poured ointment on his feet, the widow of Nain who walked behind the bier of
her dead son, the woman who was bent double with arthritis, the widow in the
Temple who put two small coins in the offering box, and the women of Jerusalem
who wept as they saw Jesus carrying his cross (Luke 7,36-50; 7,11-17; 13,10-17;
21,1-4 and 23,27-31).
From
all these and other texts we can be sure that the historical Jesus was very
much in touch with his own anima. He was aware of the concerns of women.
He cared about them. He learned from them. He recognised in their needs, and
their suggestions, promptings by the Spirit. The forgiveness and reconciliation
he brought from his Father, were as much for women as for men.
It is
true, Jesus could not, during the short span of his public ministry,
overturn all the social prejudices of the
time. He did not take a stand for feminist
emancipation, as little as he campaigned to abolish slavery. But, in his
attitude he established principles that
would revolutionise all human relationships.
See
also Elisabeth MOLTMANN-WENDEL, The Women around Jesus, London 1982;
A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey, London 1986, pp. 137-148; Mary GREY,
Redeeeming the Dream: feminism, redemption and Christian tradition,
London 1989, esp. pp. 95-103.
By dying and rising for us, Jesus
liberated women as well as men
We
could now proceed to a deeper level and ask: What use has Jesus’ concern
been to women? Has it actually resulted in facts of liberation? Has the Risen
Christ proved as effective for women as the promise held out by Jesus of
Nazareth?
The
answer is: yes! The position of women in religion changed dramatically with the
coming of Christ. Whereas she had only belonged indirectly to the covenant of
Moses, woman was now made a child of God on an equal footing with man.
In
the Old Testament, it was only the men who were the immediate
bearers of the covenant.
- It was the male
children who were circumcised when they were eight days old. The covenant,
therefore, was concluded directly with the men. Women belonged to it only
through men - first as daughters of their fathers, then as wives of their
husbands.
- It was the men
who were expected to offer sacrifices in the Temple. Three times a year, at the
three major feasts, all the menfolk were to appear before Yahweh’s face.
The women could come along and take part in the sacrificial meal, as did
children, slaves and guests. But it was not really their own sacrifice.
- In the Temple at
Jerusalem, Jewish women could enter inside the wall of separation into the
court of women. They were not allowed to proceed further. The men, on the other
hand, could enter the court of Israel. It was this court that faced the altar
of holocausts and it was there that the priests accepted the gifts for the
sacrifice.
- When Mary and
Joseph presented Jesus in the Temple, Mary had to stay back in the court of
women, while Joseph carried the child Jesus and the turtle doves into the court
of Israel. It was there, in the women’s enclosure, that they met Simeon
and Anna (Luke 2,22-38).
Also
in traditional Judaism the same distinction persisted. It was the men who were
required to recite the regular prayers. Men had the principal seats in the
synagogues. Men could read from the Torah. Only ten males could form the
quorum, minyan, required for public prayers. At the age of 13, boys were
initiated into their adult religious duties by the Bar Mitzvah ceremony. No
such thing existed for girls.
It is
with this background in mind that we can appreciate the revolutionary change
brought by Christ. For both men and women are initiated into the new covenant
by one and the same rite, namely baptism. We have already seen above that in
baptism we die with Jesus and rise with Jesus. Both men and women undergo this
transformation and come out as ‘a new creation’.
On
account of this, both men and women share equally in the eucharistic meal and
have equal religious duties. These are factual changes with enormous
consequences.
Paul
expressed the principle in these words:
All of you are children of God
through faith in Christ
Jesus.
All of you who have been baptized in Christ,
have clothed yourselves in Christ.
Thus there is no longer Jew nor
Greek,
free nor slave,
male nor female.
For you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3,27-28
Notice the revolutionary changes Christ has brought about in the
factuality of human relationships to God. But this religious factuality
still needed, and needs, translation into social and ecclesial factuality.
The
Catholic Church is still discussing all the consequences. It took the Church
more than 19 centuries to publicly accept that slavery is incompatible with
God's design and against the mind of Christ (Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes
no 29). Now Rome is still resisting the admission of women to the sacramental
priesthood. We can be sure that ultimately this question will be resolved on
the basis of the fundamental equality established by Christ.
The
maleness of the Father-God image and the maleness of the historical Jesus can
pose real problems of understanding. These problems can be overcome if we put
the gender in its right perspective. The ‘fatherhood’ of God is no
more than a metaphor. God is as much a mother as a father. And the Risen Christ
is not a male figure hovering about, but the Spirit in us, the giver of life,
who has both feminine and masculine traits.
Since
we are all one in Christ, every single person can rightly see himself/herself
reflected in Christ. Whatever our social status or colour of skin, Christ has
become a new creation in us. Everything that is part of us belongs to him.
Nothing human in us is rejected by him. In Christ we transcend all the
limitations put on us by others.
Representing Christ’s full
personality requires representing also his feminine traits
Jesus did not hesitate to use feminine and maternal images to describe
his work. The love he shows in eating and drinking with sinners is that of the
male shepherd foolishly off in search of the one lost sheep; it is that of the
father indecorously running down the road to welcome his penitent son; but it
is also that of the woman who turns the house upside-down in search of an
insignificant coin (Luke 15). Christ has come to gather Jerusalem’s
children to himself as a mother-bird’s wings surround, protect and warm
her brood (Matthew 23,37). And his death and resurrection are the birth-pangs
of the Messiah (John 16,21; see Revelation 12; Mark 13,8).
The use of feminine images is continued in the description of
Jesus’ ministers. Paul called himself a father, but he also did not
hesitate to call himself a “nurse taking care of her children” ( 1
Thessalonians 2,7) or to compare himself to a woman suffering birth-pangs until
Christ be formed in his people (Galatians 4,19).
“The point of these references is not to pretend that male
images do not predominate, but to suggest that there are dimensions of
God’s love for man, of Christ’s redemptive role, and of official
Christian ministry which only feminine images can communicate. Christ
represented these to the world, although he was a male; Paul represented them
to the church, although he was a male. If a male could represent such feminine
dimensions of the divine love, it is difficult to see why a woman cannot, in
turn, represent to the Church dimensions of God’s love in Christ for which
masculine images are used. Reasonably intelligent people understand how all
these symbols function and do not press them beyond their intent. The argument
against a woman’s representing Christ often works with rather rigid norms
of symbolization which do not always escape the “prose fallacy . . .
”
“It is the assumptions of Rome’s argument that most need
clarification. Is it assumed that, while a man can represent both the masculine
and the feminine, a woman can represent only the feminine? Are God’s
initiative and free grace more masculine than feminine? Is a wife’s
subordination to her husband the only reason why Christ may be considered the
Church’s Bridegroom? What assumptions and
predispositions—theological, cultural, psychological, and
otherwise—lie behind the description of certain attitudes and ministries
as “masculine” and others as “feminine”?" May women have a
say in the matter, or is this already a violation of ‘the eternal
feminine’? ”
Joseph A. Komonchak, ‘Theological Questions on the Ordination of
Women’, in Women and the Catholic Priesthood, pp. 241-259; here pp.
251-252.
As a giver of life, Christ is more
feminine than masculine
Paul Lakeland draws implications from the spiritual function of Christ,
as the one who gives us life.
“Christ’s saving act for humankind is accomplished by the grace of
God, and through this grace new life is brought to the followers of Christ, the
Church. The Church is then sustained by the grace of God flowing through the
head of the Church, which is Christ. Christ is at once the source and the
mediator of the life of the Church; in cooperation with the Father the Church
is born. There is matter here for a crudely biological parallel which would
make the Son the mother and the Father the father of the Church, but such is
not our intention. Rather, it is to highlight the fact that Christ comes to
bring new life to the Church, but the new life he brings (the life of the
Spirit) is not something which comes from him alone. It comes from him and the
Father. He is then the agent of handing on life which, in his humanity, he has
received from another (God), and in his divinity he has received from all
eternity in the Father. He is the cooperator who is involved in the creation of
new life for the Church, he is the source and the carrier of the life of grace.
He is, in other words, acting under a feminine symbol.”
“If the priest is the representative of Christ,
then he is so in the theological significance rather than the bodily presence
of Christ. The priest in his function at the Eucharist, at baptism, in penance,
is in the place of Christ as the bringer of new life through himself. He stands
in the place of Christ in a physical sense, but in a theological sense Christ
acts through him in the gift of grace in the sacraments. Similarly, the whole
Church can be seen as the mediator of grace to the world, a mediation in which
the free gift of God and the concern of the Church to live up to her vocation
as ‘leaven’ are intermingled. As she gives herself, so she gives God
in Christ. This is a further aspect of being Christ in the world; it may also
confuse the reader. But the confusion itself is instructive, since it is
precisely what happens when we move into the realm of metaphor and
symbol.”
“ The truth which they contain is universal truth,
and so many aspects of existence can be considered under the light of the truth
which they express. The Church, the priest, Christ, are inextricably masculine
and feminine to the depths of their religious significance. If the arguments
are only saying that there is a way of looking at the priest’s activity in
which it has parallels with some specifically masculine acts, then that is
quite true. What has to be recognised is that if a man can be a priest and yet
exercise those functions which can be seen in the light of feminine symbolism,
then it is no argument against women priests to say that they would have to
perform certain symbolically masculine acts. In fact, their suitability for
priesthood as mediation and cooperation in the life of grace is far clearer
than it is for men. ”
Paul Lakeland, Can Women be Priests?, Mercier Press, Dublin
1975, pp. 67-68. see also his Theology and Critical Theory: The Discourse of
the Church, : Abingdon, Nashville 1990.
John Wijngaards
Follow @JohnWijngaards
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