A Lenten Reflection on the Union of Body & Soul

So, um, in junior high I was determined to be Jesus in the Passion Play.

Blush.

In case you aren't familiar, a "Passion Play" is a reenactment, usually silently with narrators, of the last days of Christ, culminating in His passion and burial. The events are similar to a "living" Stations of the Cross, only in a play form. A Passion Play often includes the events of Palm Sunday and those leading to the Passion.

Also, in case you aren't familiar, Jesus is a Man.

And, um, I am not.

Oh, but in my tween-ish pride and youthful mis-convinctions, in my deeply rooted sense of gender equality, in my incorrect understanding of theological implications of body and soul, how convinced I was, how certain I was that it did not matter whether the person portraying Christ was a male or a female.

God is Love, I said. God loves all of us, I said. We are all His children, I said. Male and female are just are sex, they don't define who and what we are. Jesus was a Male so that people would listen to Him. We're all supposed to imitate Christ, I said - so anyone can be the part of Jesus.

Sigh. Of course, it didn't happen.

The other students laughed at me - you're a girl! You have to take your shirt off! (Oh, I had a plan for that). Sr. Carl was angry that I even asked, that my impertinent self even tried to argue for it.

Needless to say, my petition was rejected. And rightly so. But how I wish it had gone differently.

How I wish someone had explained to me that we are a sacramental people - that symbols do indeed matter, that it is important, for its own sake, that Jesus be played by a boy because He is a Man - the symbol must resemble what it represents.

How I wish even more that someone had taken the time to explain that God created us male and female for a specific reason - being a man or a woman does matter. The body and soul are one union - we have male and female souls because we have male and female bodies. We cannot do away with one or the other and still be who we are. Our physical bodies, which include our sex, are so important that we get them back at the Resurrection of the Dead.

Jesus is a Man because He is the Son of the Father, because He is the Bridegroom - He came to marry the Church. He is the Divine Spouse, and like a man gives of himself to his bride, Jesus pours out His very Self to His Bride, the Church, on the Cross, forever given to us in the Eucharist.

A woman cannot represent the part of Jesus in the same way in which a man could never have a baby. It does not make one sex better or greater than the other, just different, called to the same end - union with God Himself in heaven - through different means.

******
Needless to say, I was not offered the part of Jesus in the Passion Play. Shocker.

Part of the issue, too, I think was that the girl parts were all stinky. Apart from narrator roles, which were guaranteed to the best behaved students (due to some discipline issues with a crazy homeroom teacher that year, I was definitely not eligible. Me, discipline issues? Who knew?), the only female parts of any substance were dancers. The Virgin Mary danced, Mary Magdalene danced and 12 lucky girls were the Crucifixion dancers, who, yes, danced while Jesus died.

Um, who wants those parts? Who wants to dance while Jesus is dying? Weird.

Thus, it was partly pride. I built up a case for what I really thought were legitimate reasons, but I think I also thought that girls deserved better roles.

See the problem?

I wanted to be someone important. Emphasis on self.

However, that God, He's such a clever Fellow - a sense of humor and quick to teach a well deserved lesson. So, while the means were not available to convince me of the theological Truth of the situation, He instead tackled my spiritual flaw of pride and self-importance and gave me the smallest part in the play.

Who was I?

Saint Veronica.

Oh, the irony. I, who was convinced of the irrelevance of femininity vs. masculinity, portrayed perhaps one of the most quintessentially feminine of all characters - the stranger who could not help but to mother someone that she saw suffering.

We know little details about St. Veronica personally, who she was or from where she came, but we know that she obviously embodied what it means to be a woman - she was pregnant with compassion; she stepped outside of herself to take care of another; she was a spiritual mother to all whom she met, even a Roman criminal making His way to a public and humiliating death. And, she was greatly rewarded, both in that moment and in the world to come.

Thus, I not only had the chance to bear the spiritual fruit of actually enjoying the Passion Play's performance, since my two minute role resulted in my sitting in the audience for much of the show, but I have then and since had the opportunity to reflect upon the role of Saint Veronica in Christ's Passion, and whether I have followed her example of motherly service and feminine genius to those around me. Not to mention, the foolishness of pride and self-importance.

Oh, God, how well He knows what we need. Such a Clever God, that One. :)