Elizabeth M. Kelly - Jesus Approaches: What Contemporary Women Can Learn about Healing, Freedom & Joy from the Women of the New Testament

Loyola Press

Chicago

(800) 621-1008

www.loyolapress.com

2017 Elizabeth M. Kelly

All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright 1993 and 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Cover art credit: The Visitation, 152830 fresco by Pontormo, Jacopo (14941557); San Michele, Carmignano, Prato, Italy

eBook ISBN: 978-0-8294-4473-5

Based on the print edition: 978-0-8294-4472-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017942124

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For it is the Christian community which holds the risen Lord in its depths and retells the story of his life.

John Wickham, SJ

Dear Sister,

The first thing I do is this: I come to the water. This is where I hear the Lord best. This is where I sense him most, in the wind and the steadiness of the waves against the shore, in that restful depth of sight that stretches out to the horizon. Here I can breathe him in as air.

I have always been attracted to large bodies of water this way. As it happens, the retreat I have selected this time on a large lake is one my father visited on many occasions as a younger man, when he would come yearly to pray and to rest in the Lord. It is a comfort to me that he walked along these same paths and prayed in this chapel and took in this view. I imagine him here with his fathers heart, praying and longing and hoping at this shoreeven for the very me he had no idea I would later become. And I long for the Lord, as did my father before me. The constancy of this is a happy birthright, the inheritance of a holy yearning: the desire to steal oneself away to be with Jesus.

I come to the water at nightfall. And I make my way down to the shore, down the steps, down the path, over the rocksdescendingand, after settling in, I listen for the evening waves lapping against the rocks and watch the sun set as the world falls into sleepy, summer darkness. A storm brews in the distance. Lightning flashes far off in the east, and I think of you, Lord. I sense you, Jesus, stirring under the waters. How I long to see you, long for you to rise from the darkness, to gather yourself into human flesh and bone and walk on the water and call to me just as you did to your friends so long ago, Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid. Would you come to me on the water, Lord? Would you rise and come and spread your unfailing arms and call me to you, as you did Peter: Come? Would I have courage enough to say yes, and with my whole heart and without reservation or hesitation would I reach for you, step out onto the glassy waves and know that you are Lord? Would I say yes to so much grace? Grace enough to make it all the way, to lay my head upon your heart and rest in your embrace? Would you hold me, Jesus, hold me up over the turbulent sea?

The next thing I do: I think of you, sister. I bring you with me to the water, to the shore. I bring you and your secret heart here, down on the rocks, and I hold you before Jesus, before the Beloved. I take your hand and smile at you and say, Do not be afraid, take heart. It really is Jesus! It doesnt matter that I may not know your name and that you may not know me. I know that ache you carry, the weariness that sometimes creeps into your bones, the fear, the worry, will it be all right? I know that deep abiding hope in Jesus that battles with a sense of exhaustion at the worldthe world. You know. So much needs mendingand we are made for mending. So much needs a healing, feminine touchand we are rebuffed, or perhaps our cupboards are bare, our coffers feel too empty. It is a constant knife to the heartthe scandal of poverty, abortion, pornography, the injustice of it all, rejection, addiction, divorce, betrayal, illness, financial collapse, to be misunderstood, to be misjudged, accused, the meanness of our bad habits and the cruelty of our disordered hearts. I know the failure of human love and the struggle to hope. Who will mend me? you ask. I know. My heart is broken too.

So I bring you to the water, and I hold those places in you that no one knows, that no one understands, the part of you that will go to your grave never having been visited by anyone but Jesus. This is your most secret heart, the one you take to silent adoration and pray, pray, pray that Jesus will see and love and heal. I stand here at the shore and I hold you before the Lord of this sea. The lightning flashes, and I stand in the gap on your behalf, just as my father stood here again and again, stood here for me.

We have work to do. The world needs usit needs you, needs me, needs us to be the people we were created to be. It needs our gifts and prayers and hopes and lives of faithful, holy-woman service. More than ever the world needs youthough it may never love you. This is an era that desperately needs a faithful Christian woman, not a perfect woman, not a woman who has never failed nor fallen, but a woman who has fallen in love with the truth, a woman in love with Jesus, a woman willing to have her heart broken and paraded through the streets. Do we have the courage to fall in love that much? To be used without fear of loss or diminishment? To be humbled and honed and sent back out, wounded healers, teachers still learning, leaders not always so certain, companions in need of friendship, mothers and daughters and wives and menders who need mending? Jesus is not calling only Mary or Mother Teresa; he is calling Martha and Mary Magdalene, too. Jesus is not waiting for you to be perfect; he is waiting for you to say yes.

Yes to grace, yes to healing, yes to humbling, yes to forgiveness and mercy, yes to the Cross and Good Friday, to the chilly, silent tomb and to that warming glow of Easter-morning resurrection. Yes to death and being made new. Yes to a mission that, by all accounts, on the surface, seems sure to fail. Yes to the mystery and wonder of embodying beauty, truth, and goodness. Cant you feel it? Dont you know it, way down deep, some place ever-ancient and ever-new in the very heart of you? Jesus says, Come.

Maybe we have been lax too long about our work in the world, or distracted by the nonessential, or afraid we are not enough, or just plain tired, and the wound that has resulted from our neglect can be healed only by our feminine attention, our womanish prayer, our female instincts, our likeness to the bride of Christ. Men have their work too, and we join them on many fronts, in the church and in the wider world, but there is work that God is giving to women that men cannot do, not in the same way. Not because men are lacking, but because men and women are different. (We neednt make more of this than it is.) But perhaps weve stayed too long at the shore, sought too long the safety of the boat. We might be tired and frightened, some of us might feel broken and so lonely, but Jesus is here, and he says, Come. How will you answer? What will you do?

There are things the world wants you to forget, but Jesus asks us to remember, to remember who you are in Christ: Remember who you are in me. Remember the lavish grace he wants to pour out upon your heartthe mercy, forgiveness, courage, and strength just within your reach. The touch of Jesus on your heart does not change only you: it changes everything.

Woman, rise, take heart; lets help each other reach together for the Lord. Lets walk on the glassy, uncertain sea and let Jesus meet us and heal us and teach us and hold us all the way to heaven. He will tend you, every part of you. He will tend you, strengthen and prepare you, and send you forth. Come, let us be women about our fathers business.