The Myrrh-bearing Women

“Myrrh-bearer” (Myroforos) is the title the Eastern Church gives Mary Magdalene above all others save “Equal-to-the-Apostles.” It comes from the spices the women bought and brought to anoint the body of Jesus on the first day of the week (Mark 16:1–2; Luke 24:1). This file sets out the band of myrrh-bearers, the act that names them, the synaxarion’s gathering of them into a fixed company, and the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women — the third Sunday of Pascha — on which the whole Church honors them.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Equal-to-the-Apostles, Myrrh-bearer)

The Spices and the Name

The myrrh-bearers take their name from a concrete act of love. Mark records: “And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen” (Mark 16:1–2, RSV). Luke, who has already noted that the women “prepared spices and ointments” after the burial (Luke 23:56), continues: “But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices which they had prepared” (Luke 24:1, RSV). John, for his part, records that Nicodemus had brought “a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds’ weight” for the burial itself (John 19:39) — so the women came to complete an anointing already begun.

The Greek word for the aromatic ointments is myron, and from it the women who bore them are called myroforoi, “myrrh-bearers.” The act is one of pure devotion: they came expecting to find a corpse and to render it the last service of love, with no thought of resurrection — indeed they came worrying only “Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?” (Mark 16:3, RSV). The Eastern tradition treasures this precisely because it was love offered without hope of return; the women sought the dead and found the Living One. The title Myroforos therefore carries within it the whole pathos and reward of their fidelity, and it is the title by which Mary Magdalene is hailed in her own service: “Holy Myrrh-bearer and Equal-to-the-Apostles” (The Menaion, July 22).

Who the Myrrh-bearers Were

As with the women at the Cross, the Gospels name overlapping but not identical sets of women coming to the tomb. Matthew names “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary” (Matt. 28:1); Mark names Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome (Mark 16:1); Luke names “Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them” (Luke 24:10); John focuses on Mary Magdalene alone, though her own words “we do not know where they have laid him” (John 20:2) imply she did not come unaccompanied. In every list Mary Magdalene is named, and named first.

The Byzantine tradition gathers these scattered names into a fixed company. The synaxarion for the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women most often numbers them at eight: Mary Magdalene; Mary, the wife of Clopas; Joanna, the wife of Chuza; Salome, the mother of the sons of Zebedee; Susanna; and Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus; with Mary the mother of James — the Theotokos herself being honored as the foremost and first of all myrrh-bearers (The Pentecostarion, the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women; The Great Synaxaristes). [Disputed: the count and membership of the myrrh-bearers vary across the liturgical and synaxarial sources — some number them seven, some eight; the inclusion of Mary and Martha of Bethany among them is a feature of the Eastern liturgical gathering of the band, not a datum of the Gospel tomb-narratives, which name only the Marys, Joanna, and Salome. The tradition harmonizes the Gospel lists into a commemorated company rather than reproducing any single Gospel roster.] Note that the Eastern inclusion of Mary of Bethany among the myrrh-bearers, as a distinct woman from Mary Magdalene, is itself a witness to the Eastern non-conflation of the two (see The Eastern Tradition).

The Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women

The whole Church honors the myrrh-bearers on the third Sunday of Pascha, the second Sunday after Easter, known as the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women. The day commemorates the women who came to the tomb, together with the two secret disciples who buried the Lord, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus (The Pentecostarion, the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women). It is, in effect, the Church’s feast of faithful discipleship at the moment of the Resurrection — a celebration of those whose love did not waver.

The hymnography of the day dwells on the paradox of the myrrh-bearers’ errand. The kontakion has the angel proclaim to them: “When Thou didst cry ‘Rejoice’ unto the myrrh-bearers, Thou didst make the lamentation of Eve the first mother to cease by Thy Resurrection” — setting the myrrh-bearers, who hear the first “Rejoice,” against Eve, who first heard the sentence of death (The Pentecostarion, kontakion of the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women). The reversal is deliberate: where a woman was first in the fall, women are first at the news of the rising. The same theme runs through the resurrectional hymns of the Octoechos, which repeatedly recall “the myrrh-bearing women” coming with spices and finding the empty tomb (the resurrectional troparia and the evlogetaria, “The angelic host was filled with awe,” sung at the Sunday matins).

The Myrrh-bearer as Apostle

The myrrh-bearers’ act of love becomes the occasion of their commission. At the tomb the angel — or, in John, the risen Lord Himself — sends them to tell the disciples (Matt. 28:7; Mark 16:7; John 20:17). So the women who came to perform the last service to a dead body are sent to proclaim that He lives; the myroforoi become heralds. In Mary Magdalene this commission is concentrated and personal: she is not only a myrrh-bearer but, in John 20, the first to see the risen Christ and the first sent to announce Him, and so she is called not only Myrrh-bearer but Equal-to-the-Apostles (see The First Witness and Apostle to the Apostles).

The two titles belong together. As Myrrh-bearer she represents the love that seeks Christ; as Equal-to-the-Apostles she represents the love that, having found Him, is sent to proclaim Him. The Eastern Church holds both in a single phrase whenever it names her, and the iconography unites them by giving her the alabaster jar of myrrh and the proclaiming gesture together (see The Iconography).

See Also

References

  • The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version: Mark 16:1–8; Luke 23:56–24:11; Matthew 28:1–10; John 19:39; 20:1–18.
  • The Pentecostarion. Trans. Holy Transfiguration Monastery. Boston, 1990. (The Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women, kontakion and synaxarion.)
  • The Menaion, July 22. (The service to the Holy Myrrh-bearer and Equal-to-the-Apostles Mary Magdalene.)
  • The Great Synaxaristes of the Orthodox Church, the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women. Trans. Holy Apostles Convent. Buena Vista, CO, 2008.