Hegumen Evmeniy 
 "Sisterhood of Christ"
If you read the Gospel through a very humanly perspective
you can get the impression that not many people really understood Christ and that women in particularly understood Him even less than his pupils.
But nevertheless they saw that he was a good man…kind, loving, very nice with children.
They say once a woman was caught and He had forgiven her and let her go.
He managed to solve the koan that the Pharisees gave to Him… Hammer her to death with stones or let her go?
Because both of the questions are provocative. The Pharisees always ask provocative questions and Christ manages to softly dodge them.
But the women sensed with their hearts that He was a loving man, they saw His humanness, they saw the meeting of the Divine and the humanly in Him.
And I don’t think that they had the revelation that Jesus was the Son of God in the same sense that Peter had.
They didn’t perceive Him as a teacher. They saw that actually Christ doesn’t even really live for Himself.
He teaches people, feeds and heals them, and He doesn’t even have a wife.
So He lives for other people, serves, gives away everything that He has and still they hear some words about God, but they perceive them more in the form of parables
than in the form of complicated theological abstractions that you can read in the Gospel According to St. John: “I and the Father are One”.
It’s very hard for a woman’s mind to grasp what that means… but what they do understand is that He loves and that He is genuine.
And they follow Him and they cry… What is the essence of crying? It is reacting to the pain of loss, it is hurt feelings, it’s emotionality.
So many words have been spoken by psychologists about women’s emotionality.
And first of all Christ comes to sooth their wounded feelings, their pain of loss, first of all he comes to them.
First of all He comes to those who are in need in consolation, who are in sorrow, to those who feel bad, who’s soul is tormented.
And He comes and says “See I’m here, I’m alive” – and happiness came, and they are filled up with joy.
And they ran and told everybody else, and buy the way how they told nobody could possibly have any doubts!
Either they got something wrong or they just need to go and have a look for themselves.
Of course his pupils, men are more reasonable, they argued on this issue – did He or did He not really resurrect,
or the questions of Philip and Thomas on the Last Supper. They wanted to understand something, but the women just had faith and loved Him with their heart.
If you take for example some priest who lives in a semi-abandoned village but sincerely serves God and prays for other people,
there will most likely be women who will be willing to go there and work as a cleaner and serve this priest and Christ living in him and in this temple.
And you can find a lot of such quiet women in the history of the Church who devoted themselves to serving God.
I really like it when the server come unnoticed.
If a person serves through his ego then you will always notice his presence: “Get out of my way, don’t you see I’m cleaning the temple!”
or “I’m praying, don’t bother me!”.
But a genuine server always comes under the radar. It’s always clean…if a person comes to clean something up, he will arrange it in a way that you will never notice.
Unfortunately you can find a lot of people who serve God, but so little who can do it without making a big deal out of it,
without any profits for themselves, not doing it for self-actualization. Because service is surrender without self-actualization
when there is no you anymore, there is only that what you have given and after you go back in the shade. It is important to be that kind of server.
I think what every mother can learn from the Virgin Mary is that on a certain stage she must understand that her son or daughter is not her property.
If you read Khalil Gibran you can see that he is very clear on the issue that your children are not really yours, they belong to God, they belong to themselves.
One of the main problems of child-parent relationships is when parents perceive children as their property,
when they have so many expectations concerning their children,
as if they don’t have the right to just be themselves and all they must do is live up to their parents expectations.
The only commandment that the Virgin Mary gave to humanity, and this can be understood from Marriage at Cana is “Whatever He tells you, do just that”.
And the same here…I onñe had a woman parishioner who said to me:
“You know Father, I don’t address Christ Christ, I don’t pray to Him – he is very strict, but the Virgin Mary on the other hand as a woman will understand me”.
In response I gave her a koan “Do you really think that the Mother of God is more loving that God Himself?”
Sometimes people have this transformation in their heads that as if it is precisely the Virgin Mary who controls everything in the Heavens,
and as if God is angry and is thinking “ahhgg those little suckers, I’ll destroy them, those sinners, they are unworthy!”
And she sits there and goes “There there now, calm down, everything is OK, they will get their act together”.
I believe in the Virgin Mary’s power of prayer, buy I also believe that God is love in His essence.
I believe that is not possible to demonstrate more love than I have seen in Jesus Christ – the incarnated God on the cross.
And I believe that whoever may have influence on divine love or whoever may try to have an influence on it from Earth or from the Heavens
– nevertheless Divine love is bright blinding light.
The love of any human being, however spiritual he may be is only reflected light.
That is why even if we would take a lot of mirrors and place them around the sun, still the sun wouldn’t grow larger from that.
Maybe we will get more specks and splotches but the sun will not grow larger. And still every dewdrop reflects the sun.
