Itinerant Feasting: Eastern Christian Women Negotiating (Physical) Presence in the Celebration of Easter

Abstract

This article looks at the particular way in which Lebanese women, who originally come from Antiochian Orthodox and Maronite Churches and by marriage join the Protestant Church, construct and experience their Easter celebration. Starting with the bodily experience of the feast, it analyses how each liturgical context orients and temporally locates the women. It explains how the engagement of the body relates to the material experience of presence. Constantly moving between the different celebrations the women considered create a personal symbolic network where their perception of Christ's presence and absence is challenged. The article suggests that in this weaving of the feasting experiences the women perform their liturgical and sacramental theology; a theology of negotiation mirrored in the resurrection narrative of Maty at the tomb.