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That’s What Friends Are For……

two friends

I woke this morning with friendship in mind – its meaning, value, rarity, and purpose in the divine plan.  

Five years later, the death of my dearest friend still weighs heavily on me. So my recent deep conversation with her son about her revived the pangs of loss we still felt even while celebrating someone we both love.  

two friends
two friends

My friend made it seem effortlessly natural to warmly reach out and establish friendships with people wherever she found herself, a talent I marveled at continuously through the long decades of our own friendship. She was amazingly loving and giving to “her people”, always. If she met you, and you seemed honest and authentic, you were very likely going to become one of the ever widening circle of people she enjoyed surprising and celebrating in unexpected ways large and small.  She taught me so much about the virtues of true friendship, including loyalty, honesty, sympathy, empathy, effort, generosity, trust, forgiveness, humor, and companionship. Her funeral was humbling – could so many other people cherish her just as much as I did? Officially, her creed was not mine. But she taught me many lessons about the right way to live.

Today’s double feast day in the Catholic Church of Saints Joanna and Manaen (his feast day in the Orthodox church was yesterday; her Orthodox feast is June 27), a day I imagine as a celebration of friendship forged through faith and adversity, prompts this post.  

Herod’s Court was a dangerous place

Saint Joanna’s husband Chuza was King Herod Antipas’ steward – making Joanna a highly visible member of the Herod’s court. Herod was the ruler of Galilee for the Romans during a period roughly equivalent to Jesus’ lifetime.  It was Herod who imprisoned Saint John the Baptist at the urging of his vengeful wife Herodias, a woman who could not tolerate John’s admonitions that her marriage to Herod was sinful and immoral because she was simultaneously Herod’s brother’s wife, and another brother’s daughter. It was Herodias who put her young daughter Salome before the drunken Herod to dance and demand the head of Saint John. It was Herodias who likely made sure Saint John’s head was buried “in an unclean place” from which, Christian church tradition tells us, Saint Joanna recovered it for proper burial.  We know that Herod and his entire court were well aware of Jesus’ ministry and connection to Saint John. Did anyone at court know about the faith in Him held by Joanna and Manaen?  Could either Joanna or Manaen have been safe from the machinations of a vindictive Herodias if Herodias discovered their connections to Jesus, and therefore to Saint John? Was Joanna able to recover the head of Saint John because her stature in the court gave her access to information that the other disciples did not have?

Saint Manaen

As with the traditionally recognized myrrhbearers, there is only one mention of Saint Manaen in the Bible. He is described in a manner variously translated as a foster brother or lifelong friend of Herod Antipas. He was therefore likely was also a member of or frequent attendant at Herod’s court. Yet if he followed Jesus, then his status as foster brother or intimate friend would not have saved him from Herodias’ wrath if she discovered his discipleship.

Friends?

I’m skeptical that these two Saints somehow became followers of Jesus unbeknown to each other.  Did Joanna, healed of her unnamed affliction by Jesus, bring Manaen to Christ? Or was he the one who heard about Jesus’s healings and reached out to her, offering her a path towards the miracle of healing? 

Either way, these two would have had to follow Jesus in utmost secrecy to safeguard their lives and their loved ones. Imagine the strength of the friendship that could have developed over their shared experiences – becoming aware of Jesus and his ministry, meeting him, following him (in Joanna’s case being healed by him), all the while knowing that their loved ones, social circles and livelihoods centered around Herod and Herodias, devious individuals who were capable of murder if displeased. Jesus called Herod Antipas “that fox” – not admiringly.   

Why do we have friends?

I think of friendship as a reflection of God’s love for all of us. Although our lives are fleeting, sometimes terrifically hard and brutal, God designed us to seek each other out for the companionship that can soften the wounds of bad times and magnify the joys of good times.  I think we all actually need friends – and by that I think we all need community.  After all, we are made in the image and likeness of a God who is love and has revealed to us that He is a trinity – a community, if you will. It is no wonder that a scourge of modern life is the technology that encourages us to unwittingly burrow away from each other, abandoning our opportunities to join, grow, enrich and enjoy our own communities.

I try to honor my friend and our friendship by purposefully continuing to join her husband, children, grandchildren, and friends in celebrating her and each other.  There is a saying: What Would Jesus Do? In my head, it’s so often also this: What Would Deb Do?

That’s What Friends Are For….

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Illness & Faith & COVID

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In the weeks following my cancer diagnosis (just barely pre-COVID) I distracted myself from worry by thinking about the modern intellectual/emotional connections between illness and faith. That proved too elusive for me to easily identify, or commit to. I believed it was my Christian duty to avoid despair, and I was ever mindful of that. But as countless believers before me have undoubtedly done, I found myself repeating the words of that parent from St Mark’s gospel, over and over and over: “Lord I believe. Help my unbelief.”

If my time really was almost up, medically speaking, was it ultimately pointless to pray for a miracle? If a prayer for deliverance was pointless, were other prayers likewise? I could not accept that. But these thoughts needled me in my weakness nonetheless.

Once COVID hit, however, I saw that our modern world is still populated by people who default to the timeless truth that prayer has value. Social media, when I looked at it to distract myself, seemed to me to be laced and graced with many prayers of petition and gratitude regarding this pandemic. I found great encouragement in that. And my own experiences after my cancer diagnosis, I was to learn, would reveal to me a spiritual aspect of modern medical care that I had never contemplated before.

At least three of the original women myrrhbearers (Saints Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Susanna) apparently first came to Christ seeking relief from failing health. We’re told (Luke 8:1-3) that as Jesus traveled through his ministry, He was accompanied by women who he had healed of infirmities. These three women, in particular, were among those who were healed by Him and later provided for Jesus and his disciples “out of their means.” Since St. Luke was a physician, he most likely heard and perhaps catalogued details of many miraculous healings, by both Jesus and the apostles. Yet St. Luke is specific only about the “seven demons” that had “come out” of Mary Magdalene, leaving us to wonder what had befallen all of the others before their cures.

But does that matter any more?

Modern health care in first world countries does not deal with demons. Our bodies are instead clinically tended to in a high tech, scientific, and evidence-based world. Robotic surgery, diagnostic imagery, radioactive surgical seeds, pluripotent cells and gene therapies, nanotechnologies, artificial skin – these and other inventions offer tantalizing glimpses of modalities to come that will no doubt be even more spectacular and wondrous than those we currently benefit from and their contrast to ancient medicine will become all the more striking. Superlative health care in the modern mind is a vision in gleaming white and chrome – always sanitized, pristine, and rational.

Such a deep contrast to the medicine available to the myrrhbearers. Knowledge of infection, sanitation, wound care, and contagion was available in ancient times, but rudimentary at best. Yes, the diagnosticians of the time could recognize fever, leprosy, and some other diseases, and had developed a body of knowledge concerning wound care, but we’ve all read Gospel stories of persons afflicted with inexplicable conditions. The woman with the flow of blood, for example. She was so desperate (and so brave) that she shattered prevailing social boundaries in the sure belief that only a divine response could save her. She had already suffered deeply from healing ministrations and “spent all she had on doctors” (Mark 5:26). Human ingenuity had not yet accumulated the knowledge that over the centuries has led to the discoveries and technologies we moderns take for granted.  But her hope led her to her faith, and her faith led her to Jesus Christ.

Did the simplicity of the health care in the myrrhbearers’ times make it easier for them and their contemporaries to draw upon faith, and by doing so more easily recognize their healer as their divine Master? At that time, when there appeared to be no earthly answer to the maladies that had befallen them, what else but divine intervention could have been the answer to their fervent desire for restored health?

That dynamic between illness, faith and hope is exactly what proved elusive to me when I tried to translate it to current times.  On receiving a fearful diagnosis, I tended to my medical affairs and my spiritual affairs as if they were two entirely divorced realities, two halves of a split personality.  I suspect that my reaction was not unique among those of us who struggle to reach higher spiritual levels.

But recently, as I prepared for surgery, an unexpected call rang on my cell from one of my hospital’s chaplains. COVID had already hit on a global perspective, personal encounters were already limited, and telemedicine was taking center stage. The hospital was one that I knew would provide world class medical care flawlessly (and it did). And in filling out endless forms online, I had somewhere checked a box listing my faith as Christian. Yet I was surprised that a hospital chaplain called me.

I think my surprise reflects my concept of my own times: a modern conceptual divide between science and spirit, if you will.

Up until that call, I had regarded any hospital not named “Saint Something” as a thoroughly secular universe. There, prayers would not be broadcast on the hospital PA system to open and close each day (as Catholic hospitals, in my experience, do – so beautifully). There, it would be uncommon, in fact it would be somewhat shocking, if a community volunteer or member of a religious order hesitantly peeked into a patient’s room at a “secular hospital” offering to pray with or for the patient, even though Chaplains are often available for the asking at many hospitals. Chapels and chaplains, I thought, had survived the general scrubbing of things “religious” from the public square in recent decades only as anachronisms, as cultural relics. I’d become weary of reading about all of those faceless “Nones” (who, I’m told repeatedly by media sources, surround me). So it was only in hindsight that I realized that I had no expectation that my faith and spirit would be recognized or supported in my clinical journey through this hospital’s patient care pipeline.

I’m so glad I was so wrong.

When this call came through, a surprising result occurred. In my mind, World Class Hospital had just reached out to me, through this chaplain, specifically to acknowledge to me that as the high functioning medical institution that it is, this hospital accepted as scientific, salient, and clinical fact the proposition that all human beings are spiritual beings.  Was my impression well founded?

It was. As my treatment options were explored with my healthcare team, I realized that world class, modern medicine has already begun to make a patient’s faith and spirit focal points of the most modern of healing protocols.

The hospital would not have provided a chaplain for me if doing so was not a cost effective, proven resource to employ in the improvement of my medical condition.  If the benefits of that service didn’t yield statistically affirmed results, surely it would have been discontinued.

Similarly, meditation and mindfulness are now commonly taught, encouraged, and facilitated for patients by their treating medical institutions. The spiritual benefits that derive from being present among calm, natural beauty are fostered by the on-campus flower and “zen” gardens that have been installed at many modern healthcare centers.

Even atheists, I believe, can acknowledge that a certain something defines themselves and every other person they know as unique and unrepeatable  – a soul, if they can accept the term – and that the soul should be nurtured.  Therefore an institutional acknowledgement that all patients are spiritual beings demonstrates a faith/health connection that all modern patients should recognize as entirely scientific and beneficial.

The chaplain who called me was lovely.  Central casting, in a way: a considerate, calm voice. Quick to size up where I might be on my personal spiritual journey. Encouraging and empathetic. Yet professional.  The fact that circumstances had conspired so that a stranger reached out to me to invite me to murmur with her ancient prayers for healing and mercy over the phone reminded me that I am always in God’s care. And made me, I confess, teary at the very thought.

Why did I write this blog post?

It is my hope that as we and our loved ones persevere in this COVID battle, we will be gentle enough with ourselves to let go of modern concepts of a division between our bodily health and our spiritual health. The two are inextricably entwined. They always have been, always will be. God made the first human body, and then breathed a soul into it (Genesis 2:7); Adam was incomplete and nameless before that moment.

If we are of necessity sending a loved one off alone to a hospital or a healthcare facility to battle COVID, we can remind our beloved that the ubiquitous, faceless “they” (in other words, the doctors, researchers, nurses, hospital administrators, and other relevant experts into whose world the patient must enter) don’t just think, they know, that meditation and prayer assists in healing.

Therefore, let’s remind anyone isolated through this disease – without the presence of family and friends – that as patients they are neither helpless nor alone. They are actually an integral part of their own care team because they can function as such in an important, healing way that no one else can possibly do but them.  Because they are in control of their own minds and hearts, they can choose to pray. And as they pray, their faith and hope can help them heal. World class hospitals say so.

 

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Our Best Response to COVID? Mimic Mary Magdalene and the other Myrrhbearers

“Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week.” I’ve always valued the special character of a Sunday. Time to worship, rest, recoup, visit, chill. It doesn’t happen often, but this week the Sundays bookmarking its start and finish have each been dedicated to a feast day honoring the Myrrhbearers.

MaryMagdaleneSusannaandJoanna by Mary McKenzie Nativity Project
Mary Magdalene with Joanna and Susanna (The Succession of Mary Magdalene)  Triptych, First Panel, Janet McKenzie

Last Sunday Eastern rite Christians who follow Western calculations for the Paschal cycle celebrated Myrrhbearers Sunday, often also called the Sunday of the Ointment Bearing Women. And today, Orthodox Christians celebrate the very same feast day (the week’s “delay” being attributable to Eastern calculations for the annual celebration of the Paschal season). Since I am an Orthodox Christian married to an Eastern Rite Catholic priest, I’ve enjoyed two opportunities to celebrate in real time this year a day that honors the Myrrhbearers.

It’s been a joy. And a relief.

Throughout the world Christians of all denominations spent this week confined to our homes, unable to worship in our accustomed ways. We longed to be physically present in our churches, in our spiritual communities, because we are made in the image and likeness of God, a Trinitarian community. At our deepest level, we need to belong to a community. In Christian traditions with Eucharistic liturgies, that longing is intensified by the desire to again share the mystical supper with the brothers and sisters of our own communities.

Staying away feels like true deprivation. Solitary pastors fill our screens, celebrating services in empty churches, and it feels forlorn and wrong. In fact, it is wrong, from a spiritual perspective. We’re viewers, no longer participants. And our occupation with earthly concerns distracts us from that reality. Community worship restores our solitary souls to the dynamic of communion in which they were meant to exist. So there was no better place to focus this week’s meditations on the Myrrhbearers than St. Mary Magdalene, who can teach us moderns quite a bit about faith and absence.

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Maria Magdalena, Alfred Stevens, 1877

Mary Magdalene has fascinated the imaginations of artists throughout the ages, because much lore surrounds her story. Miscast popularly as a women of loose morals, as a sinner, as the unnamed woman who wept at Christ’s feet and wiped her tears from them with her hair, Mary Magdalene is a compelling dramatic figure – from a human perspective. But if she was once that troubled woman – and that’s a big if (and a topic for another day)– she was so, so much more.  She was a leader, a strong woman, an independent thinker. Brave. Loving.  But most telling for us in COVID times, she prepared herself at Christ’s death for his coming absence, and continued to believe in Him as Lord and God.

Consider in chronological order the scriptural passages in which her name appears, and the import of her place among the disciples and the esteem with which she must have been regarded will become apparent. It can be easy to forget that Mary Magdalene was honored by God to be the very first disciple, in fact the very first believer in Christ – man or woman – to whom the risen Christ appeared, and she was among the small group of women given the privilege of announcing the Good News of the Resurrection to the Apostles and other disciples hidden in the Upper Room.

Here’s a quick rundown of Scriptural references to this Saint:

  • Mary Magdalene suffered an illness/condition (referred to as “seven demons”) that only God could cure.
  • She is almost invariably the first named of the woman disciples in any scriptural list, and always included in such lists, which attests to her prominence and leadership among the women. She is mentioned by name twelve times in the Gospels – more than any Apostle or other disciple.
  • Her suffering led to her faith in Jesus as Lord and God, and her faith led to her participation in Jesus’ ministry. She provided financial support for Jesus and his disciples as they travelled through Galilee and other regions.
  • She was apparently always close by to the Lord. All four Gospels, while focusing on different details of the passion, crucifixion, and resurrection, place Saint Mary Magdalene at the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. Near the foot of the cross, she and other women disciples “watched from a distance”, and she stood vigil nearby with Jesus’ mother and her sister. It was only when evening approached that Joseph of Arimathea appeared.
  • She was present and watched as Joseph of Arimathea took down Christ’s body, laid it in a tomb, and had the stone rolled in front or the entrance.  She remained at the tomb when Joseph departed.
  • At dawn on Easter Sunday, she went to the tomb. Varying accounts (presumably reflecting the she made more than one visit to the tomb that morning) say she went alone, or with “the other Mary”, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and with other unnamed women disciples. We refer to these women as the Myrrhbearers.
  • She returned to the tomb after having discovered that the stone had been rolled away and Jesus’ body was not there, and running to tell the Apostles.  Simon Peter and another (whom Jesus loved) returned to the tomb with her, but didn’t understand that Christ had risen.
  • She lingered at the tomb after the Apostles left and, all alone, had her famous encounter with an angel, and then with the risen Lord.  She had cried over the loss of the divine body – she never gave up caring for Him. When He spoke her name she knew who spoke, immediately. “No lo me tangere” – do not touch me, Jesus said, and “Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”  And she did so. Along with Joanna and other unnamed women, she told the Eleven and others of the encounter with two angels who announced the Resurrection – but the men considered the news “idle tales” (KJV).

What does this outline reveal to us? Mary Magdalene had an unwavering faith. She proved it, returning to the tomb alone to ponder all that had happened, to try to make sense of it, to be at the center of the controversy – she couldn’t stay away. As we don’t want to stay away today. We don’t want to shelter in place. We want things to return to “normal.” We want to pray the way we always have. We want to be comfortable.

But once the risen Christ called her name, Mary Magdalene began the journey we all face today – to learn to speak to the risen Lord despite his physical absence. She did that armed with a monumental faith in His divinity.  And my realization that she did so made this “Myrrhbearers Week” so worthwhile. While I don’t pretend to myself that I have the faith Mary Magdalene had, I realize that I can nevertheless follow her example by drawing upon the depth of faith I do have, to try to draw nearer to God through my own efforts.

Modern Christians have many ways of deepening their spirituality. There is so much good advice available to us through our pastors, scholars, authors, musicians, and our Christian brothers and sisters.  Additionally, there are well settled Christian traditions that we may discover, or rediscover. I’ve spent some time this week thinking about two of them.

Pious Eastern Christians attempt to pray habitually, with automaticity, a particular prayer in an effort to draw near and stay near to God. The “Jesus Prayer” is meant to help us internalize our relationship to God with each utterance, and so to make Him present with us always –

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.”

Much has been written about the practice of repeating this prayer from a “top of mind” perspective throughout the day – and this coming week, while many of us have time on our hands, is a good time try to explore some of the commentary, and try it.

Some Western Christians have a different practice of prayer meant to overcome the pangs of separation from God that they feel when the Eucharist is not available to them.  It’s called a “Spiritual Communion”, and if prayed with sincerity can draw us nearer to God and suppress our preoccupation with the worship we are “missing”.  Roman Catholic Christians pray it this way:

“My Jesus, I believe that You are present in the Most Holy Sacrament.
I love You above all things, and I desire to receive You into my soul.
Since I cannot at this moment receive You sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart.
I embrace You as if You were already there, and unite myself wholly to You.
Never permit me to be separated from You. Amen.”

The concept of a spiritual communion with God – of any kind – is in reality a life-saver.  Saving our eternal life. None of us, COVID or not, can rest at night with the knowledge that the day just ended wasn’t our last.  For me, the fruit of Myrrhbearers Week 2020 is going to be one less book, one less Netflix, quite a few less Facebook surfs, and many more repetitions of the Jesus Prayer.

 

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Why I “channel” St. Joanna

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Lackluster and unfocused.  That would not be a harsh judgment on my journey to this, my first blog post. But nevertheless, as with so many seeming paradoxes that reveal themselves when we ponder Christianity, I have derived great value and focus from a meandering journey. Less became more.

In the byways of the past decade+ of my typical and average modern life as a wife, mother, daughter, professional –  as I aged, and tried to work out my comfort zones with life and death – I was increasingly soothed by the thought, inspired by St. Joanna, that in God’s goodness timelessly important things, good for our souls, really do happen to ordinary, anonymous people. Always have, always will. And though those moments will likely receive little or no worldly renown, perhaps remaining forever unknown except to the recipient, they really can be a divine, lasting gift. Anonymity is not to be shunned. Or regretted. Neither is it cause for celebration.  It is simple truth that no matter whether highborn or otherwise, one’s level of notoriety eventually dwindles to naught (sometimes quite soon after we are “gone”) unless it lingers, somehow, into legend. My journey has caused me to resolve to live with an openness to the possibility of what might be small but portentous (for me) divine gifts.

This journey began without fanfare or recognition.  I made a small, ordinary decision to sample a weekend women’s discussion group at a church I knew and loved.  The pastor’s session wrap-up was a teaser – the next month we’d focus on a saint who we likely had never thought much about. It would be about St. Joanna. Led by – surprise! – me. I am her namesake.

At that point, all I “knew” about St. Joanna was that she was a myrrhbearer.  I’d seen a couple of references to her in the New Testament, but figured that if I was to lead a half hour discussion, then I must have missed quite a bit. I felt inadequate. Father as always knew exactly what he was doing. He quickly thanked me for “volunteering.” And then I was on my own.

In the intervening month, I began what has over the years become for me a habit of meditation and prayer that I never expected to develop. It has its own distinctively sporadic yet compellingly captivating manner.  It took on a shape and substance of its own. It called to me endlessly, but waited patiently for me in the interstices between the other “more important” things I really thought I just had to do first.

To prepare for my presentation to the women’s group, I had to read between the lines of Scripture – to imagine what was left unsaid about St. Joanna by the Evangelists. St. Luke, her only Scriptural champion, provided just two short references to her by name (Luke 8:1-3 & 24:1-11).

Luke 8:1-3 Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, preaching and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, 2 and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, 3 and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means.

Luke 24: 1-11: But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices which they had prepared. 2 And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they went in they did not find the body. 4 While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel; 5 and as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? 6 Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, 7 that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise.” 8 And they remembered his words, 9 and returning from the tomb they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. 10 Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told this to the apostles; 11 but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

Diving in, I began to list all that St. Joanna might have seen or heard as she encountered and followed Christ. Subconsciously, the rational, professional side of my brain took over; I am a lawyer, and as I considered the blank spaces between Scripture readings about her, I craved solid evidence to support my analysis of who St. Joanna might have been.  “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1. St. Joanna was healed by Jesus, but how did that come to be? She also “provided” for Christ and His disciples, as did others, “out of their means”, but did women in those days own anything of worldly value?  Since she was one of the women who followed His earthly ministry, wouldn’t she have had personal relationships with the Apostles and their families, with Christ’s mother, with Jesus himself? However did she manage that outsized experience? Eventually St. Joanna witnessed Jesus’ passion, and was with His mother and others at the foot of the cross; did she lose her faith and her nerve at that point? Hard to tell, even though she was among the myrrhbearers to whom an angel announced the Resurrection. That angel sent her with the other myrrhbearers to be evangelists to the Apostles, to be the very first to announce Christ’s resurrection; did that portend her eternal reward for steadfast faith? What would it have been like to live a life clearly touched by the Divine?

Evidence.  At first it came down only to that. Cold hard evidence is touted these days as antithetical to “mere” faith, isn’t it? It’s integral to the modern holy grail of Science, after all.  And isn’t Science its own religion in the modern era?

I found no hard evidence of who St. Joanna was. Circumstantial evidence – just barely. Commentary – except for the rote retelling of elusive “church Tradition” about her discovery of St. John the Baptist’s head – almost non-existent. Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that anything I would share with the women in our group about St. Joanna had at least to be rooted in something objective that I could safely latch on to – and for me, that came down to what I consider timeless aspects of human nature. Would the men and women of the New Testament have been motivated by emotions alien to us moderns? I thought not. Their faith was legendary, their interpersonal relationships – perhaps not so much.  Remember the mother of James and John (often called Salome) who wanted special treatment for her kids? Lord can’t my boys just sit at your right and left hands – eternally? Not nice to push your way forward in front of all the other mothers? But really –  give her a break. We all get that. Even if we wouldn’t say it.  Or would we?

My presentation to the women’s group was, as someone astutely observed, wholly in line with my profession, even if I hadn’t consciously intended it to be so.  Offering pages upon pages of notes with citations, I dissected episode after episode of the New Testament, speculating whether St. Joanna could or would have been involved in each story, albeit as a perhaps nameless, faceless, but faith-filled onlooker. I strove to stockpile evidence of who she might have been, so that the other women could weigh that evidence and, perhaps, each come to her own verdict – a reasonable understanding of who St. Joanna was.

That month long exercise never ended.  It has occupied my mind and fueled my faith for over a decade.  My understanding of Scriptures and my memory of its lessons morphed over time because of it.  Where I once had listened to or read a scriptural passage passively, I became an active participant in its interpretation as I looked at Scriptural passages from St. Joanna’s point of view. What would St. Joanna have been doing when the woman with the hemorrhage approached Christ through the crowd? Would she have known of the woman’s quest beforehand, perhaps have already encountered and encouraged her? There was no reason to think she would have, but every reason to think she could have. How did St. Joanna feel encountering Jairus when he thought he was losing his daughter? Did St. Joanna commiserate when Jesus told Martha to let her sister Mary do her own thing? Or did she just choose the better part, join Mary at His feet, and soak up all He had to say? Was she peeved – maybe even defeated – when she announced the divine news of the Resurrection, only to have her words considered an “idle tale” (Luke 24:11)?

With God’s grace I hope this blog will invite and inspire others to dig deeply into Scripture and our Christian faith in a way so many of us may never have before – by using our own emotional toolboxes as resources in an effort to understand what this blogger believes can only have been wholly human reactions to the Divine, reactions that moderns would easily recognize.

Christians of all denominations are invited to accompany me and  “channel” St. Joanna. I hope you will start with me today, June 27, which is the day on which the Orthodox Christian Church annually celebrates St. Joanna’s feast day.