by Joan Mitchell, CSJ
On the strength of a Samaritan woman’s witness, her townspeople come to meet Jesus and believe in him. The Eastern Church gives her the name Photina (light bearer). In her conversation with Jesus, the woman recognizes he has come in spirit and truth to include her people in his community.
Like the fishermen who leave their nets to follow Jesus, she leaves the water jar that symbolizes her work and goes to tell her townspeople she has found the messiah. The strength of the Samaritan woman’s word and witness brings her people to hear Jesus for themselves. Her witness can inspire our own.
Her story provides the title for a collection of writings about who Jesus is in women’s lives today. The book is The Strength of Her Witness: Jesus Christ in the Global Voices of Women (Orbis 2016). Theologian Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ, is the editor.
Her Christology class at Fordham University frequently took Sister Elizabeth to the library. Christology is the study of who Jesus is, our faith seeking theological understanding. In the library Sister Elizabeth looked for articles to add women’s voices to the many men’s voices already wrestling with who Jesus is for us today.
The articles she has collected explore women’s experience of Jesus. Twenty-five women theologians speak out of cultures rooted in six continents, out of women’s struggles for liberation, out of experiences of mothering.
Hispanic theologian Maria Pilar Aquino understands Jesus as liberator of the oppressed. One meets him through participating in la lucha, the struggle of the oppressed for dignity and life. “Something is wrong with living in the terrible deprivation so many do,” she says. “Faith motivates me to seek justice. Theology is knowledge for liberation and service of the people.”
Jeanine Hill Fletcher, a young mother and professor at Fordham, offers breast feeding as an example of self-giving love. “It requires commitment all night and all day to giving of the self to the needs of the other.
Humanity suckles at the breasts of Christ as Christ gives himself for the lives of many, and Christians are called to carry on that mother role for a world in need.”
- Where does your Christology come from? What do you say to others about Jesus and our relationship with him?
