Lord,
This woman who encountered her shadow
perceives the numinous in You,
leads the women who come with grief and myrrh to Your grave.
Alas! What a desperate night I’ve traveled through:
extravagant the desire, dark and moonless
the needs of a passionate body.
Accept this spring of tears,
You who empty the seawater from the clouds.
Bend to the pain in my heart, You
whose incarnation bent the sky
and left it empty.
I will wash your feet with kisses,
dry them with my hair, feet that Eve once heard
at dusk in Paradise then hid in fear.
You who are limitless mercy – who will trace the results
of a lifetime I’ve done wrong, evaluate
my weakness? I ask, remember me,
if nothing else, as one who lived.

Translated yb Liana Sakellion

Kassiane 804 – ? is the best known Byzantine woman writer and the only one whose work is included in the Eastern Orthodox liturgy where 23 of her hymns are included. In Troparion she speaks in the voice of the sinful woman of the gospel of St. Luke 7 (see below) and considers the possibility of repentance.

The whore and the Madonna, the two major feminine archetypes in western religiosity, and in this hymn Kassiane directs our attention to the former through St. Luke’s harlot. This woman quickly identifies her journey on the shadow side (an interesting description centuries before Freud and Jung) and for company includes the much maligned Mary Magdalen and arch-temptress Eve.

The harlot says she has been driven by dark and moonless desire (more feminine adjectives) by the needs of her passionate body, the same body that has the power to transform the masculine potential into manifestation, thereby bringing life to the world. In contrast the Madonna is given the power to give birth without the messy stigma of sex or physicality.

In fulfilling the destiny of her body, she bends to the pain in her heart leaving it empty, as Christ leaves the sky through incarnation. Eve’s relationship to God is poignantly described by the fear induced in hearing his footsteps.

While this is a large subject for another discussion, in the Garden, it was Eve who was the curious one, the one willing to break the rules, to explore and risk. Without her courage, or as some may call her defiance or rebelliousness, mankind would still be in stasis, held a golden cage of endless obedience that did not require a Christ to redeem it.

The final sentence reminds me of two other gospel stories; the first is the thief on the cross who asked to be remembered when Jesus came into his kingdom, and the second, the story of the servant who buried his talent for fear of losing it.

The fallen woman did not bury her talent through fear but dove deeply into life. She may have made mistakes but she participated fully. It is her willingness to love (courage of the heart) that makes her most worthy of …. what? Forgiveness? Redemption? Who is it that asks and who is it who grants this boon?

LUKE 7
37 And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was at table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, 38 and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment 39 Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” ….

44 Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house, you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45 You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. 46 You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. 47 Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little.”