Women's Time

I'm excited to begin the Triduum here at the monastery, as a sister again, a companion of the women who stood by Jesus.  These days feel to me to be special for women.  We know they were at the events of the three days, sometimes serving the men, sometimes just standing by helplessly, sometimes getting ready to prepare Jesus for burial.  We don't know the details, but I feel them every year as I work in the sacristy, or wash feet, or sit in a dark quiet place.

Last year I went to Israel.  We went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the supposed spot of Jesus' death and burial.  At the entrance there is a large flat rectangular stone, imagined to be the stone on which his body was prepared.  It is called the Stone of Anointing.  Now, the stone has only been there 100 years or so.  Its historical connection to the crucifixion is tenuous.  But pilgrims have been pouring oil and scent on that stone for a century, and it now smells and feels like a place of anointing.  I bent down and smelled it, and it captured me.  All around me pilgrims poured olive oil and spices onto the stone, and soaked handkerchiefs and crosses in the oil.  I soaked the only thing I had, a rosary I had bought on the trip.  For a while, it smelled of the tomb.  I still smell it, in my mind, when I hold that rosary.

For me that stone belongs to the women.  That love, that outpouring, that oil and tears and scent, was the gift of the women as surely as any gifts brought to the manger by wise men.  But these three days of love and pain and fear and hope belong to us all.

Have a blessed three days, rising to new life and love.