We Need More Myrrhbearers
Photo by Gowtham AGM on Unsplash
Wonder Anew is a new recurring section of the Church Anew blog, intended for spiritually curious readers who want to explore the Christian faith with honesty, depth, and imagination.
The day I found the Myrrhbearers (or rather, the day they found me) happened the way spiritual revelations often arrive: on a lark and in the dark.
Truth be told, I had already dug deep down a research rabbit hole—so I was on the prowl, primed with curiosity. But I was working on something different: a retreat for the feast of the Epiphany, a celebration of surprising light, far-off wisdom, and strangers bearing wondrous gifts.
Since Epiphany is one of my favorite moments in the church year, I thought I knew it well and was only digging into the details to fact-check my work. What was the deal with all those expensive presents that the magi brought to the Christ Child? What exactly did the gold, frankincense, and myrrh symbolize?
That’s when the internet stopped me in my tracks with a single fact. The incense of myrrh is made from “tears” formed when the sap of the myrrh tree hardens after cuts in the trunk expose the sap to air. Myrrh comes from tears.
My brain started churning—but this was only the beginning. A single strange word at the bottom of the botanical post caught my eye: Myrrhbearers.
Next thing I knew, I felt like Indiana Jones, pushing the right part of the wall in the hidden tomb to unlock a chamber of buried secrets. Turns out that another tradition in Christianity—the Orthodox Church—had long honored the followers of Jesus who cared for his body after death and came to the tomb to anoint his body with oils and spices. Named for what they carried, these saints were called the Myrrhbearers.
I scrolled centuries of iconography and stories of devotion to the Myrrhbearing women, including a few of favorites like Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus. Their images towered in mosaics on church domes and filled feasts in the eastern liturgical calendar. Most importantly for my own life, muddled with grief and marbled with doubt, they lifted up in shining gold and sacred myrrh the power of the holy dark.
The Myrrhbearers struck out in faith when everything looked bleakest. The tears of their hardened hopes softened back into wonder and joy with the reversal of the Resurrection.
Later I learned there were two men among the women, too. (I learned a lot about the Myrrhbearers, as they became my latest theological obsession and spiritual inspiration.) I realized they might be exactly the ones we need right now, when the world again feels shrouded, uncertain, and unsafe.
Myrrhbearers go out while it is still dark. The women are the ones in every Gospel who go first to the tomb on Easter morning. They are unafraid to get close to death, suffering, and society’s outcasts. They start before they’re ready, whispering “Who will move the stone for us?”. But they don’t need all the answers. Knowing that hard times call for ancient rituals, they gather the wisdom of the ancestors, preparing the tasks of care that their elders taught them.
Myrrhbearers bear hope. They carry healing withtheir oils and aloe mixed with spices, for the ointment of anointing. But they also carry the belief that the body matters. Suffering and death are not shameful, hidden away or kept silent, but meant to be tended with exquisite care.
Myrrhbearers go together. They show us strength in numbers and the power of diversity. They include women old and young, poor and wealthy, named and unnamed, known and unknown. (In particular, Mary Magdalene is not defined by her relationship to anyone else, not a wife, daughter, or sister—important for all of us.) Men are also counted among the Myrrhbearers: Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, who are willing to care for the body, carry what is heavy, and stay when the others flee.
Myrrhbearers are willing to drop what they’re doing. Art of the Myrrhbearers often shows them holding or dropping their jars. Perhaps they set them down when they went running to spread Jesus’ news, or perhaps they startled at the surprise and the jars shattered. Either way, they let go of their original purpose and set out in a new way. Myrrhbearers not only tend to the crisis at hand, but are ready to pivot when everything changes.
Myrrhbearers carry mixed emotions. Joy and fear. Hope and grief. Certainty and doubt. We are all a mixed bag, even in our moments of clarity. As the tears of myrrh’s hardened resin remind us, even grief can become sacred—not in any bright-siding bypassing, but through nature’s quieter truths. Nothing is lost. What is hardened can be softened. What was bitter can become fragrant. Love lingers long beyond death.
July 22nd is the feast day of Mary Magdalene. Thanks to Pope Francis, her feast day has been elevated to the status of a solemnity in the Catholic Church, underscoring that she shares the same rank as the men who followed Jesus. Known as “the Apostle to the Apostles,” Mary Magdalene is the Tower that we tend to picture as strong, solitary, and standing alone. But remembering that on the day of the Resurrection she was also among the Myrrhbearers reminds us that even in our own time and place, we go together.
Myrrhbearers lead and follow. The church would not have existed without them. They paved the way for everything that would be built after. But only because they followed Jesus—out of love, out of hope, out of courage.
Imagine if every time you stepped into a church, you saw a brilliant mosaic of the Myrrhbearers. Carrying jars of oil, bearing the body of Christ, standing together in strength and solidarity. Imagine if every time you stepped out of a church, you remembered that the Myrrhbearers went with you: the support of women, the faith of those who care for body and soul, the courage of leaders who carried the whole church in their arms and hearts for a brief, brilliant flash. Their legacy has been lost in too many corners. But the beauty of the church’s wide tent means that we can always learn from each other.
I’ve come to love the Myrrhbearers. I’ll talk about them to anyone who listens. The last time I spoke about them at a retreat, women kept coming up and telling me how much it meant to them to learn about these sisters in faith. “Myrrhbearers!” They kept laughing to each other, bumbling through the mouthful of a new name. But even in the word itself, a whole poem: murmuring low and deep, like a lullaby never to be forgotten, from the women who brought us here today by what they bore.
We need more Myrrhbearers. Every gender, every age, every social class, every race. All of us together, bearing our grief, sharing our suffering, believing that it still matters how we live when it looks like everything is falling apart. We can remember the ancient ways, set out while it is still dark, and trust in the smallest actions of hope. What we carry together matters.
