For us men and for our salvation he came down… In the incarnation of God, throughout his sojourning on this earth, in, by, and because of his suffering, death, burial, and resurrection, all the way to the point of his victorious ascension, the world we live in was transformed, flipped upside down.
In the beginning, it was evening and morning, the first day. After the resurrection, the world begins anew each morning, and so it can be said, “It was morning and evening, the first new day.”
Along these lines, with regards to the nature of the sexes, St. Chrysostom makes the following declaration as he expounds upon the women at the cross of Christ: “But the women stood by the Cross, and the weaker sex then appeared the manlier so entirely henceforth were all things transformed.”
Then again, the notion that the women were being more manly than the men, sounds to me more along the lines of the Fall…”and she gave also some to her husband who was with her.”
Perhaps the “weaker sex” was never intended to be weak. Perhaps the women who stood by the cross were not so much being “manly” as demonstrating true femininity in their faith and loyalty to the Savior.
Most definitely! And so Chrysostom’s desire for transformed weakened vessels into manly vessels is the wrong kind of transformation. The Cross, and the Resurrection were not a generic transformation into something completely other, but a restoration, renewal, of what was intended to be, but on a more glorious level. Thanks for the insight, oh so strong woman.