Hearing, honoring, and believing women’s faith stories

Reflection for the celebration of St. Phoebe by Rhonda Miska

A reading from the holy gospel according to Luke (24:1-11)

“At daybreak on the first day of the week, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb…behold, two men in dazzling garments appeared to them. They said to them, ‘Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has been raised…Then they returned from the tomb and announced all these things to the eleven and to all the others. The women were Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, the others who accompanied them also told this to the apostles, but the story seemed like nonsense and they did not believe them.”

Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary, and the other women were the first witnesses of Christ’s resurrection. Imagine their disorientation and confusion when they couldn’t find the tortured body they’d come to anoint. The fear and overwhelm at angels appearing. The insight and joy when they remembered Jesus’ words and began to wrap their minds around the extraordinary miracle 

So much! How full their hearts! How much they had to share! The message: Christ is alive, the Gospel is true, love is stronger than death.

Then: “the story seemed like nonsense and they did not believe them.”

A door slammed shut on the women’s testimony, experience, first-person witness of the Risen Jesus. Throughout the 2,000 years since these women faced their fellow disciples’ disbelief, countless women who follow Jesus have been ignored, silenced, dismissed, and been told their story was nonsense.

So we are here today joyfully, faithfully resisting any movement that dismisses women’s experiences as nonsense, that considers women’s stories to be idle tales.

We are here to claim that all the baptized – whatever gender, age, background, education level – are baptized priest, prophet, and royalty, sharing in a universal call to holiness, created in God’s image and likeness, protagonists walking the journey together in equal dignity in a co-responsible Church.

Each of us has a story to tell of God’s goodness and power in our lives –

a story of the Holy Spirit’s presence,
a story of call,
a story of being and becoming.

Those stories must be received, and heard, and reverenced, and honored, and most of all, believed.

Maybe you’re wondering, who is this woman and how did she get so fired up about this?!?

I’m Rhonda Miska, and I’m a preacher. 

Like all of you, I am a lot of other things, too: a daughter, a godmother, a friend, a writer, spiritual director, a lay ecclesial minister, and an adjunct professor at St. Kate’s University. But my primary identity is preacher, and the charism of preaching is at the center of my life, my relationship with God, and ministry. 

So how did a cradle Catholic girl from a suburb of Madison, Wisconsin come to discern a preaching vocation? I was a churchy little kid, far churchier than my parents expected one of their kids to be! I had an enduring sense that God was real, and the beauty of the liturgy – music, sunlight coming through stained glass windows, flannel board Jesus in Vacation Bible School who could heal people – all captivated me. 

In high school, I loved God and I loved words. I was in theater, in speech club, in AP language classes. I went to youth group and sang praise songs and served as a lector at Mass. But as much as I loved God and loved Scripture and loved church and loved the spoken word, I didn’t have the mental map to put those things together to see what they added up to.  

Fast forward some years, after college and serving as a Jesuit Volunteer in Nicaragua and working in parish ministry. I’d also gotten a master’s from the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry. I spent hours reading Vatican II documents, attending daily liturgies, and sharing in classroom conversations.Then I would take public transit over the Cantab Lounge for the Boston Poetry Slam. Yes, I was a theology student by day and a spoken word poet by night. 

One night ten years ago, I was visiting a friend and colleague – a Presbyterian pastor, a woman I’d gotten to know through ecumenical efforts. She also loved poetry, so I shared a few pieces with her. 

I told her how I loved the electricity of speaking before people who were gathered and engaged with the words spoken, how I tried to pull together words and images that would resonate, how it all flowed out of the prayer and study at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry and dealt with themes of faith and love, incarnation and resurrection, the goodness of creation and the power of community. 

She said to me, “Rhonda, what you’re describing here – crafting words rooted in prayer and Scripture, speaking them to an assembly – in my tradition, we would call that preaching.” 

And in that moment, all my mental furniture rearranged itself. PREACHING! So much has flowed from that precise moment of insight. 

It led me to discern religious life with the Dominican sisters, the Order of Preachers, to share in community life with women who claimed the charism of preaching. It led me to study preaching  at the Aquinas Institute of Theology and to begin a doctor of ministry in a preaching program there.  

And when I discerned in 2020 not to continue pursuing a lifetime commitment as a Dominican sister, I wondered how to share the graces from my time with the Order of Preachers. 

Then one Sunday at Mass, I proclaimed these words from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: “woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.” (I Cor 9:16) 

Those words rang in my ears for days. They took hold of me and wouldn’t let go. 

I remembered when I was a canonical novice and we would preach vespers every Sunday. Different sisters would take turns preaching during vespers and then after, we would offer feedback. It was a gift to hear women preach, and so much learning came from the conversation. 

I thought, “I want to offer this experience to other Catholic women in ministry.” And out of that inner movement came the Catholic Women’s Preaching Circle, a peer community of Catholic women who accompany and encourage one another in breaking open the Word of God. I am grateful to share that the seventh cohort of the Circle is beginning this week. It is my great joy to tell you that as a Catholic woman who loves to preach and is called to preach – I am not special! I am not unique! 

These are women who are extraordinarily dedicated to the Church and have invested a lot in preparing themselves to serve the People of God. Members of the Circle are board-certified chaplains, campus ministers, spiritual directors, retreat leaders. Reading women’s applications for the preaching circle is walking on holy ground. Here is some of what they have to say:

“I have known that I am a preacher for a long time. The Catholic Women’s Preaching Circle is an answer to prayer. Now I know I’m not alone.” 

“I am called to preach. I know it in my bones. Whether anybody hears me preach or not, there’s something about my salvation that is bound up in me pursuing this call.” 

Like I said, I am not unique. I have watched women move from “not sure if I should apply and am qualified. I don’t preach, I’m not a preacher” to “I’m preaching for the opening retreat at the school next week.” 

And these women have told about the positive responses they have received from pastors, from women and men, from girls, from so many in pews who have been thirsting for so long to hear the Gospel preached in a woman’s voice. 

Christ is alive, the Gospel is true, love is stronger than death, and the Spirit is moving. We live in a world scarred by sin and fear and hate that needs credible witnesses of that good news. Credible witnesses from ALL the baptized unleashing in our world the power of the gifts the Holy Spirit has given us.

I wish I could tell you that now that we are in a Global Synod, and now that we have undergone listening sessions that surfaced that women’s participation is critical and urgent, and it was raised on every continent ,that we can know for sure that there will be immediate and concrete outcomes to restore the diaconate to women, to create more spaces for lay people to preach, to reduce the negative impacts of clericalism.

But I can’t tell you that. It is more messy than that. It’s more vulnerable than that. The truth is we don’t know what the outcomes will be. That’s a hard truth that has made me cry more than once. 

And what is also true is that the Spirit is moving. Jesus is alive. The gospel is true. God is calling women to discipleship and leadership, to preach and bear witness and offer testimony, and the call is being answered in spite of roadblocks and obstacles. 

Mary Magdalene was faithful to the task that she was given by the Risen Christ. 

Even though she wasn’t listened to at first, none of us would be here today as Christians if it were not for her witness! 

St. Mary Magdalene, St. Phoebe, all you holy women pray for us!

Rhonda Miska offered this pre-Mass reflection for a St. Phoebe celebration. Rhonda serves in parish ministry, is a member of the Catholic Women Preach Advisory Board, and is the founder and co-convener of the Catholic Women’s Preaching Circle. Rhonda holds a MA in Pastoral Ministry from the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry and is currently pursuing a doctor of ministry in preaching at the Aquinas Institute of Theology.