Joanna
of
Chuza, a Disciple from the
Very Beginning
(Article first published in July 2004 Edition of Revista Internacional de Espiritismo)
Evolution and Apprenticeship
According
to the teachings of our
Doctrine, we know that a Spirit must evolve in wisdom and goodness from
its
initial state, when it’s created simple and ignorant, until it reaches
its final aim, that is, the
perfection of Pure Spirits.
Basically, Spirits may evolve in two ways. One of them, when a more advanced Spirit teaches them something it knows and they humbly accept the received teachings and from that moment on it starts acting in accordance to the learned lesson. Faster and easier, this is the only way that enlightened Spirits need in order to learn, although it is mostly inadequate for ignorant Spirits. These latter, still living in their spiritual childhood, never trust the experience of others, but they always choose to experience again the events that others described as already lived by them.
It happens however that the more evolved a Spirit gets, the more patient and indulgent it becomes. So, although it knows our weakness, it doesn’t leave us victims of our primitive choosing criteria. Instead of that, it keeps teaching us always, with its words and life experiences, confident that we will wake up one day from our spiritual lethargy and realize that God’s laws apply to all with no exception, thus accepting from that moment on received teachings and reported life experiences from more advanced Spirits as if they were our own experiences and learned lessons.
After having reached the status of good disciples, learning stages will be easier, leaving more time available for doing good deeds, repairing our wrongdoings and enlarging our minds towards what’s pure, beautiful and sacred.
Bearing in mind what we have considered up to now, let us listen, as good disciples, to the descrption of a few lives of our wise and loving Joanna de Ângelis, trying to obtain from those accounts the profound teachings they contain, so that we can try to use them in our behavior from now on. In this article we’ll talk about Joanna of Chuza, a disciple of Jesus from the very beginning.
Joanna
of Chuza
What we know nowadays about Joanna de Chuza is partly contained in the Gospel according to Luke and mostly written by Spirit Humberto de Campos in the book “Boa Nova” (Good News), through the mediumship of our beloved medium Chico Xavier.
Joanna was the wife of Chuza, the steward of Herod Antipas, king of the Jews from 4 BC to 39 BC. After having received a grace or a healing from the Master and having known his teachings by listening discreetly to his preaching, she tried to follow him. She was then advised by Jesus not to do so but to stay at home and, through her words and behavior, help the evolution of the husband who had been trusted to her in that life.
When her son was born, she dedicated
her body and her soul to his upbringing and moral education, with the
same zeal and love
she had for her husband. Following Jesus from a distance, as much as
her
occupation as zealous mother and dedicated wife would allow, she was
one of the
women who provided financial help to Jesus and his disciples.
After the martyrdom of Jesus, Joanna joined other women and went to the tomb with spices and ointments to wrap up the dead body of the Master. Arriving there, they found the empty tomb, thus being able to testify the survival of the Spirit after the death of the body, as Jesus had taught them.
After her husband passed away, she had to work for other families to raise her son, something she did with dignity until she was old.
During one of the many persecutions suffered by the early Christians, Joanna was imprisoned with her son and other followers of Jesus and taken to the circus in Rome. There on August 27, year 68, she was sacrificed by being burnt on a pyre stake together with her son and several other martyrs who refused to renounce their faith.
Humberto de Campos’s description of the last moments of Joanna contains additional information that interests us in a particular way. Humberto de Campos tells us that when the flames had already started to touch Joanna’s body, she serenely lived those painful moments with her mind focused on Jesus. Then she was interrogated by an executioner, who asked her:
- Has your Christ only taught you how to die?
To what she placidly replied:
- Not only how to die, but also how to love you! ...
Under the tremendous emotional and mental dilemma of having to choose between keeping faithful to Jesus or betraying him in order to save her life and that of her son, she found strengths to give victory to her mind and restrain her emotions. On that supreme moment she proved to have learned in the deepest of herself how to love even her executioners.
How much did Joanna of Chuza learn close to her beloved Master!
*
Let us consider now what lessons does our modest evolution stage allow us to extract from the final moments of Joanna of Chuza? Will her example will only serve us when we are able to die for Jesus? I don’t think so.
We must never be afraid of supporting the teachings of our Master and friend. We must not be coward failing to act in front of injustice, if we are able to face it with the light of our acquired knowledge. No matter how unfavorable circumstances may be we must never leave the teachings of Jesus, remaining patient, gentle and dedicated to everyone around us, no matter if they treat us well, bad or if we are indifferent to them. Let us develop our senses so that we may learn how to love those that offend us or hurt us, seeing in them brothers and sisters who are behind us in the evolution path and for that very reason deserve our help and understanding.
Let us practice that sublime attitude of Joanna of Chuza on a small scale from now on. If we are still unable of loving our enemies, let us start learning how not to hate them. If we are still unable to use our acquired knowledge to take light to where darkness prevails, let us at least learn how not to increase existing darkness with our confused feelings, dominating our emotions and educating our mind to what is good.
Jesus doesn’t expect radical changes in us. He knows our imperfections and weakness. More evolved Spirits follow Jesus more closely and assist us in better perceiving the aim to achieve. As the old saying tells us, a road of a thousand miles always starts with the first step. Therefore, let us be determinate and take our first step. Keeping our eyes focused on the aim, we will surely get there one day.
*
Will the lessons from Joanna’s last minutes of life be the only ones we can learn? I am sure they aren’t. Such an elevated life is a source of perceivable lessons and an article like this is too short to comment, moreover there are those that we fail to notice due to our shortage o understanding. From those aspects that are clear to us, I would like to comment a very important lesson that may have passed unnoticed.
On a Saturday afternoon I was preparing the study that originated this article and inspiration refused to come. I had written the introduction on a weekday late in the evening after the kids had already gone to bed. It had come out free from the mind to the computer’s keyboard, straight, with no doubts, no hesitation. Why was the text that Saturday afternoon so difficult to write? I wrote, erased, and wrote again, the work wouldn’t go. Why? Then an idea came to my mind: ”Shouldn’t you be playing with the kids?” I stopped my work and went to play with them, staying with the kids till late until they went to bed. When I went to a nearby market to buy some refreshers for them a new idea came to my mind: “How do you want to teach something you haven’t already learned?”
That’s it, dear brothers and sisters, the other lesson from the life of Joanna de Chuza that I am glad to comment is the teaching she received from Jesus. When she wanted to follow him the Master told her not to do so but to remain close to her husband and become for him an example of Christian life, thus fulfilling the mission that had been entrusted to her.
The main mission of those persons who constitute a family is close to it, serving with words and behavior as a model of what being a Christian means. Those who place the activities they believe to be Christian or, in our case, Spiritist, before their family duties, duties that are always assumed in the spiritual plane, are wrong if they think that such is God’s will. No. That was not what Jesus taught Joanna of Chuza and the account of her life allows us to learn.
The Spiritist worker must be absolutely serious concerning his duties in the Spiritist Center, in his job and at home, never failing to be present and active in any of them for a frivolous or foolish reason. However, the worker must never ignore a real family need using the argument that a duty at the Spiritist Center or at his job demands his presence. If children of Spiritst workers don’t follow Spiritism, if children of hard workingmen and women take wrong paths in their life, aren’t those signs that the commented lesson from Joanna de Chuza’s life still has to be learned?
Costa, Renato. Aprendendo com Joanna de Ângelis (Learning from
Joanna de Ângelis). Study presented at Joanna de Ângelis
Spiritist Institution, on December 11, 2003.
Santos, Celeste e Franco,
Divaldo P. A Veneranda Joanna de Ângelis
(Venerable Joanna de Ângelis). LEAL. Salvador, 1998.
Bíblia Sagrada (The Holy Bible). Translated from the originals by the Monks of Mardesous. Ave Maria, 1997.