I love it when the feast of the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearers falls on Mother’s day! The Church today remembers what the rest of our nation celebrates: The courageous and steadfast faith that is found in our mother’s, grandmother’s and Godmothers, without whom we would have a difficult time learning the meaning of Love. We remember today the love of God that was found in women like St. Mary Magdalene, our courageous patroness who had an audience with Caesar himself in which she proclaimed the resurrection. We remember the love and example of the Mother of God, the compassionate mother of us all! We remember St. Joanna, St. Susanna, Sts. Mary and Martha of Bethany, St. Mary the wife of Cleopas, and the saint who I wanted to hold out today as an example of courage and faith today!
St. Salome is a woman of whom all Orthodox Christians should be emulating during this bright season! She was believed to have had a tremendous connection to Christ and the Church from the very beginning, in that she was the first cousin of the Theotokos! When Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem, ancient Christian Texts like the Protoevangelium of James (2nd century) tells us how Salome was present with the other mid-wives. Like so many of us do from time to time, she had her doubts about the virgin birth of Christ. It didn’t make logical sense! How can a virgin give birth?
When the other midwives called her in, Salome went to examine the Theotokos. As she reached her hand towards her cousin, it withered in front of her! She was in complete shock, until she was told to hold the Christ Child in her arms, after which her hand was completely restored, and her faith strengthened! Imagine how this moment changed and transformed St. Salome throughout her life! [1]
St. Salome gave birth to St. John the Theologian and St. James, who eventually became disciples of our Lord. Like all mothers, she had a tremendous love for her sons. She knew from her own experience that Christ was the Messiah and that he came here to establish the Kingdom, but she was misguided…thinking that this was a kingdom that was meant to be established on the earth. Like any good mother, she wanted to see that her sons did well in life, so one day she pleaded with Jesus and said: “Grant that these two sons of mine may sit, one on Your right hand, and the other on the left, in your Kingdom.”
Our Lord said to Salome and her sons “You don’t know what you are asking….are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”
This response no doubt confused Salome, until she witnessed with her own eyes what our Lord was truly asking. When she stood there at the foot of the cross with her cousin and Jesus’s Mother Mary, she lamented and beat her chest in grief. The drink that our Lord referred to was His crucifixion, and the baptism was a foreshadowing of His death.
St. Salome grieved for three days, before being present at the tomb and experiencing that same joy that we all experience at Holy Pascha. She was among the first to be an eyewitness to the resurrection. She understood in that moment exactly what the Kingdom was meant to be and in changed her life in the same way that the reality of Pascha changes all of our lives! No longer do we need to agonize over the difficulties of life, or the sadness of death. It is defeated! Hell has no sting! Satan has no power! Christ is Risen!
It was this reality that allowed St. Salome to serve the Church of Jerusalem after Pentecost. She was an eyewitness to her own son James being beheaded by the soldiers of Herod, and to this, she rejoiced that our Lord had granted James the heavenly place with Christ that she so desired for her sons!
St. Salome was there at all of the critical times of our Lord’s Life. She was chosen by God to be there because of her humility, love, and desire to follow Christ. She is not unlike all true Christian Mothers, who make up the backbone of our faith, without whom the Church would not be able to withstand the stormy waves of life. If we want proof of that, we don’t need to look too far in our own world history!
There is a story from the Russian Revolution, where the civil authority called Orthodoxy “the opium of the people” and spent decades trying to stop clergy and the faithful from learning about Christ. One of the soviet leaders came to mock Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow saying: “Now that we have all of your priests, what will the Church do after the last priest dies?” To which the patriarch prophetically replied: “There will be another generation of Babas to take their place.”
Brothers and Sisters, where the Church without our mothers? Where would we be without the Holy Myrrh bearers, who provide for us an example of what Christian Courage and Humility look like? Where would we be without a relationship with THE MOTHER…the blessed one, who is always pointing and show us the path to Her Son…so that like the sons of St. Salome, we too can sit next to our Lord in the blessed Kingdom that is prepared for us all!
[1] This story is found in Chapters 19 and 20 of the Protoevangelium. There is some scholarly discussion about whether the Salome mentioned was the cousin of the Theotokos.