By Johnny Zokovitch
This past Sunday, March 8, offered a happy coincidence: the observance of International Women’s Day and the gospel proclamation of John’s story of the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well.
It was only during my time working in Belgium for Pax Christi International that I came to fully appreciate the observance of International Women’s Day. In the US, there is a strong bias toward observing our national holidays, both civil and religious, while paying lip service at best to many of the significant days of observance or remembrance that others around the world celebrate with greater enthusiasm.
Pax Christi International, for instance, has long prioritized International Women’s Day, drawing attention to the women who lead the global Catholic community in her mission to seek justice and practice peace, specifically as a counter to the institutional Church’s continuing allegiance to patriarchy and an exclusively male hierarchy. In years past, Pax Christi International and member organizations around the world have issued statements from key women peacemakers or hosted events featuring the experiences of women practitioners of nonviolence.
In a statement in 2024, Pax Christi International Co-President Sr. Wamũyũ Wachira of Kenya offered a blessing for all women who stand up to injustice and mitigate violence in their communities:
“You heal wounds of other women, children, men and youth. You lovingly listen to stories both of hope and despair of people that you accompany in your families and communities in all their forms. You embrace the lonely, the refugees, the migrants and internally displaced. … You are the nonviolent voice amid violent echoes. … You are the beacon and anchor of hope for the broken-hearted and the wandering spirit. … Stand and be counted you women of substance.”
This year, Pax Christi International lifted up the stories of women who are “witnessing through their lives the concrete practice of peacebuilding.”
At the local level, in the Catholic church where I worship, two religious sisters offered reflections this past Sunday lifting up and celebrating the agency and importance of the Samaritan woman who meets Jesus at the well. Despite the tension that comes from their differences in gender, ethnic background, and the purity codes of Judaism, the Samaritan woman enters into an intimate and challenging conversation with Jesus, the two taking turns probing and questioning one another and crossing over the boundaries between them. In John’s gospel, the Samaritan woman is the female counterpart to John the Baptist; she goes off to witness to Jesus and her testimony is so compelling that the people of her town are drawn to him on her word alone.
“Jesus knew her testimony would be powerful enough to change her and her whole town. So he chose that person, that well, that water, and that town to begin a very public ministry,” writes Sr. Donna Day, SL. “[This] woman who was evangelized became an evangelizer. That day, in Samaria, where no followers of Jesus wanted to go…was Jesus saying to the disciples and his friends…no one is excluded from our ministry.”
“This [conversation] is scandalous,” echoes Sr. Lynne Schmidt, SSND. “Not only is Jesus engaging in a theological discussion with a Samaritan, but he is also talking to a woman in a very public place. No wonder his disciples are speechless, amazed, and confused. … [She] leaves to tell her townspeople who come to hear Jesus and believe. John portrays her as the first missionary.”
It is no secret within the Catholic peace and justice world that women are leading us in embodying those values that are at the heart of the gospel. I remember one of my mentors advising me when I was a young man just getting involved with Pax Christi, “Watch the nuns and follow their lead. They know what they’re about.”
Women religious – “the nonviolent army of nuns” as my old boss Dave Robinson once referred to them – are always on the front lines where the gospel is preached prophetically and practiced with concrete actions. And lay women have always been the backbone of the Catholic peace and justice movement, bearing the weight of this work and carrying all of us forward.
Echoing out from the encounter at that well, their testimony continues.
Johnny Zokovitch is the former executive director of Pax Christi USA. He currently serves on the board of the Pax Christi International Fund for Peace and is in pastoral leadership at St. Cronan Catholic Church in St. Louis. Read more from Johnny at https://johnnyzokovitch.substack.com/and sign up there to receive his articles directly to your email inbox.
Thank you! There has been only one brief mention of peace from my parish, certainly nothing about women as active peacemakers. Your voice is so welcome.