Friday of week 24

Some women were with them, who provided for them out of their means.

Luke is the gospel to go to to find out about Jesus' approach to women. And such women! Aside from Mary his Mother - who's 'fiat' ("Yes!") to the call of God to serve him as mother of Jesus, we have a number of other significant women. Three listed today would not have been typical of their times. Freed from possession by demons (Mary of Magdala alone freed of seven) they were also women of independent means. One was the wife of Herod's household manager - what might she have endured in that role, with a local mini despot as her boss? Amongst the many others, might the samaritan woman at the well have been there, following this remarkable man "who told me everything I had done" ?

They cared for his temporal needs, from their own means. We know that women ran the early house churches - the earliest churches of all - as this is mentioned in Romans 16 and Colossians 4. Perhaps Luke includes this detail (not present in the other Gospels) because at his time of writing (70 AD) , women such as Prisca and Aquila were already an important part of the leadership of the church.

We should not assume 'means' relates only to money: Prisca and Aquila had nearly given their lives for Paul, who clearly speaks of them as his equivalent in importance. We should not conflate 'importance' with 'leadership', and certainly as Pope Leo has recently said, should not be paying executive offices typically 600 times the salary of the workers in an organisation who actually produce the profit.

We should all aim to be like the women who supported Jesus, giving whatever they could to build his church in its foundational years.

Posted in Daily Reflection.