The Myrrhbearing Women

The tireless women!  They would not give sleep to their eyes nor slumber to their eyelids (Ps 131:4) until they found their Beloved!  But the men as it were dragged their feet; they went to the tomb, saw it empty, and remained in confusion about what it could mean, because they did not see Him.  Does this mean that they had less love than the women?  No, here was a reasoning love which feared making a mistake due to the high price of this love and its Object.  When they too saw and touched Him, then each of them, not with his tongue, like Thomas, but with his heart confessed, "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28), and no longer could anything separate them from the Lord.  The Myrrhbearers and the Apostles are an image of the two sides of our life: feeling and reasoning.  Without feeling, life is not life.  Without reasoning, life is blind - it offers little sound fruit, and much is wasted.  We must combine both.  Let feeling go forward and arouse; let reason determine the time, place, method, and in general, the practical arrangement of what the heart suggests for us to do.  Within, the heart comes first, but in practical application, reason comes first.  Whe the feelings become educated in discerning good and evil, then perhaps it will be possible to rely on the heart alone.  Just as shoots, flowers and fruits grow from a living tree, so then will goodness alone begin to emerge from the heart, and will be rationally merged into the course of our life.

- St. Theophan the Recluse, "Thoughts For Each Day of the Year," on the Sunday of the Myrrhbearing Women, Pages 93,94