Reflections for Holy Week 3: Holy Tuesday - St Veronica (or Berenike).

 

‘[Following his trial a] great number of the people followed [Jesus], and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. ²⁹For the days are surely coming when they will say, “Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.”’ 

[Luke 23.27-29]

 

I’m just another woman in a city filled with people. People don’t even know my name, they call me Veronica from the Latin ‘Vera Icon’ (true image), but I am not bothered, at least they remember me. They also call me Berenike, but I prefer Veronica, it has a nice ring to it.

 

I was like the other women you’d find on the street corners in Jerusalem, women of negotiable affection we’ve been called. (We’ve been called much more beside!) Though before I became one of those I’d been suffering from haemorrhaging since I was a girl*. No sane man wants to marry a bleeder, and by the time Jesus had healed me I was too old to make a good match, or any match at all, truth be told! It was the only way I could make any money.

 

This Jesus had made an impression on many of my friends, just as he had on me when he healed me. He’d eaten and drunk with them, he’s spent time with them, telling them about God’s love. (I tended to hide in the shadows, hoping he’d not notice me, but I know he did, that look when our eyes met told me that he remembered me, that he still cared for me.) Most people take from us, he gave and never took. When he looked at us it seemed as though he saw us as our parents saw us, not as some piece of meat to be purchased then thrown away when finished with. He looked at each of us with love, not lust or desire.

 

I was there when he arrived in Jerusalem astride the donkey, though I couldn’t go to the Temple with him, not as a woman, and certainly not as one of those women ...

 

I heard about his arrest and trial of course, everyone was talking about it. I also heard the cries of ‘Crucify him, crucify him’. Crowds are good places to find a willing punter.

 

I was there when he fell, the cross too heavy for him. His face covered in sweat, blood and what looked like spit. All I could do at that moment was to comfort him as he’d comforted us, to wipe his face as I once wiped the face of my own child before he was taken from me. In that moment something happened, the image of his face seemed to imprint itself on the cloth/

 

I left the crowd soon after, a punter had caught my eye. But before I went with him, I hid the cloth - over the years they have taken everything else from me, first my dignity casting me out as they did, then what love I could offer. They’ll not take this!

 

* Ancient tradition has Berenike as the women whom Jesus healed from a life of haemorrhaging (Luke 8.43-48). We are not told what happened to her after her healing, though give her age and earlier illness I suspect that she had been unable to marry.