Based on traditional art, when I picture Jesus going “through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God” as we hear in our gospel today, it’s easy to imagine him either striding along at the head of his motley crew or seated with the twelve at his feet. The evangelist, however, expands that limited view as he includes “some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.”

Many others, not a few, not several, but many women were there, unnamed, but present, sharing what they had to support Jesus’ ministry. Perhaps those women were unnamed because there were so many, or because they were not well known or well-connected, or because they were so easy to overlook—who knows? Yet when we look at the mainstay of the Church over the many centuries since, we find the unnamed women serving as the bulwark of tradition, raising their children in the way of Christ, keeping the grassroots growing from generation to generation, regardless of the vagaries of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The unnamed women have served out of love, not for fame or gain, in thanksgiving rather than greed, in joy not in sorrow. In every congregation, in every spiritual gathering, it is the unnamed women who swell the ranks, faithfully showing up to serve.

The Church needs her heroes, her saints, her defenders of faith well known in every generation, but she would not have survived without all those countless others, unnamed women and men who have walked in the Way of the Cross, in compassionate self-giving, sharing their faith with joy and delight, trusting the steadfast love of God to see them through day by day.