The New Woman

To her [Mary] I entrust you,that the New Woman, Mother of the Church and of the New Humanity,may be your inspiration in the discovery of a new feminine identity in the Gospel perspective.

- John Paul II, Sept. 4, 1988

John Paul II's "Genius of Woman," the True 'Sacred Feminine'

While many people seem to be taken up with a current 'sacred feminine' hulla-balloo, it's a good thing to remember that it's all happened before, and will all happen again (to paraphrase from Disney's version of Peter Pan). We have a treasure-trove of answers at our fingertips. Literally. Just a mouse-click away are the writings of John Paul II on the matter of the 'genius of woman' (some links provided here).

More later. This is the theme of the next talk discussing the sacred feminine in light of John Paul II's On the Dignity and Vocation of Woman, June 17.

John Paul II's "Genius of Woman," the True 'Sacred Feminine':
Trying to clarify the confusion of the Da Vinci Code's notion of the feminine
Outline:

• Men and women: to complement and complete, not compete
• Woman's role in the Church: apostles and leaders from the beginning
• Woman's role in the world ('women at large'): "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world" is a true saying.
• "To know, love, serve," in that order (the importance of studying, reading, taking to heart, passing it on)
• "Those who can, do...and teach": the dignity of woman via living it out in our lives

Photo (c) 2006 M. Datiles

Awareness of a Mission

A woman's dignity is closely connected with the love which she receives by the very reason of her femininity; it is likeness connected with the love which she gives in return.

Man, who is the only creature on earth that God willed for its own sake, cannot fully find himself except through the sincere gift of self" (Vatican Council II). This applies to every human being, as a person created in God's image, whether man or woman (...).

While the dignity of woman witnesses to the love which she receives in order to love in return, the biblical "exemplar" of the Woman also seems to reveal the true order of love which constitutes woman's own vocation. Vocation is meant here in its fundamental, and one may say universal significance, a significance which is then actualized and expressed in women's many different "vocations" in the Church and the world.

The moral and spiritual strength of a woman is joined to her awareness that God entrusts the human being to her in a special way. Of course, God entrusts every human being to each and every other human being. But this entrusting concerns women in a special way - precisely by reason of their femininity - and this in a particular way determines their vocation.

The moral force of women, which draws strength from this awareness and this entrusting, expresses itself in a great number of figures of the Old Testament, of the time of Christ, and of later ages right up to our own day.

A woman is strong because of her awareness of this entrusting, strong because of the fact that God "entrusts the human being to her", always and in every way, even in the situations of social discrimination in which she may find herself. This awareness and this fundamental vocation speak to women of the dignity which they receive from God himself, and this makes them "strong" and strengthens their vocation.

~ On the Dignity and Vocation of Women
Photo © M. Datiles 2006

"That flame burns again"

...a prayer, an ancient, newly-learned form of words, and left, turning towards the camp; and as I walked back (...) I thought: The builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend; they made a new house with the stones of the old castle; year by year, generation after generation, they enriched and extended it; year by year the great harvest of timber in the park grew to ripeness; until, in sudden frost, came the age of Hooper; the place was desolate and the work all brought to nothing; Quomodo sedet sola civitas. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. And yet... that is not the last word; it is not even an apt word; it is a dead word from ten years back. Something quite remote from anything the builders intended, has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time; a small red flame--a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones. (Excerpt from Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited)