Sunday, May 19 (6), 2024
Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women
Acts 6:1-7; Mk. 15:43-16:8                                          

O the tireless women!  They would not give sleep to their eyes, nor slumber to their eyelids [Ps. 132:4], until they found their Beloved One!  The men, in the meantime, were like dragging their feet: they walked to the tomb, found it empty and remained unconvinced, because they did not see Him.

Does this mean that they loved Him less than the women?  No, it does not.  Their love, however, was restrained by reason, by an apprehension for possible mistake ─ because of the great price of this love and its object.  When the apostles also saw and touched Him, then each one of them confessed Him, if not in words, as St. Thomas, but in the heart: “My Lord and my God!” [Jn. 20:28] ─ and henceforth nothing could separate them from the Lord.

The myrrh-bearing women and the apostles are an image of the two sides of our life: heart and mind.  Without heart there is no life whatsoever; without mind life is blind, wasteful and fruitless.  We must have them both.  Let the heart rush ahead and inspire; let the mind take decisions about time, place, causes, means ─ all practical details of what the heart is pointing at.  The heart is ahead of mind in the inner life, but the mind should take the upper hand in all practical matters.  Only when the heart learns to discern between good and evil, then, perhaps, we could rely on the heart alone: as a living tree bears shoots, flowers and fruits, so the heart also begins to bear only good fruits which match the rational course of our entire life.

Read more about the author