During the 50 days after Easter the Orthodox Church celebrates some exceptional women saints. They are the myrrhophoroi, the Samaritan Woman and the woman with the issue of blood. Their names are inscribed on our calendars. Our service books contain numerous hymns in their honor. The Pentekostarion provides hundreds of examples. And for more than a thousand years theologians and hierarchs wrote and delivered sermons and encomia to these holy women of faith. Yet we pay little or no attention to them.

Among other legacies, Judaism bequeathed to Christianity the sacred number forty. In the Old Testament we read that after Noah built the ark, the heavens opened, raining hard forty days and forty nights (Genesis 7:12). Moses remained on Sinai for forty days and nights, receiving from God the Ten Commandments (Exodus 34:28). To reach the Mountain of God, Elijah walked forty days and nights (1 Kings 19:8). The same sacred number determined the date for women’s purification after the birth of a male child (Leviticus 12:1–5). Considered twice as “unclean” as the mothers of males, mothers of females were “purified” eighty days after childbirth!