Our Blessed Lady and Her Daughters: Tuesday of Holy Week, March 27, 2018

J.M.J. 

In our contemporary era, there are many competing images of women and womanhood.

Saint John Paul II, in harmony with Sacred Scripture and the Apostolic Tradition, believes women to be holy daughters of the Creator who possess an intrinsic beauty and value because they, like men, have been fashioned in the imago Dei—“the image of God.”

In his Letter to Women (June 29, 1995), he wrote that the Almighty has a “mysterious plan regarding the vocation and mission of women in the world.” Each and every woman—regardless of her role as mother, wife, daughter, sister, consecrated person—is remarkable and special in God’s sight. “Through the insight which is so much a part of your womanhood you enrich the world’s understanding and help to make human relations more honest and authentic.” (2)

Where would we be without women? The astounding realization—but perhaps not too astonishing, upon prayerful reflection—is that we owe women our very physical lives. Our mothers and fathers conceived us and brought us forth. We did not exist until they provided the physical matter and God furnished the spiritual matter.

The Ever-Virgin Mother of God is the only woman hailed as both Virgin and Mother. She, more than any other person, cooperated freely in the inscrutable design of the Maker by yielding to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, thereby living with a zest to do good that is at once amazing and inspirational. Our Blessed Lady teaches us how to put aside our projects so that Christ can work in us His inimitable plan of salvation.

After Jesus Christ, we owe Mary our salvation, given her generous participation with His redeeming work on Calvary.

As the Church praises God for Our Lady, we also offer our gratitude for women and womanhood. As Saint John Paul expressed in his August 15, 1988 Apostolic Letter Mulieris dignitatem (“The Dignity of Women”), the Church “desires to give thanks to the Most Holy Trinity for the ‘mystery of woman’ and for every woman—for all that constitutes the eternal measure of her feminine dignity, for ‘the great works of God,’ which throughout human history have been accomplished in and through her.” (31)

The Madonna is, in the words of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium), the stellar example of “obedience, faith, hope and burning charity” (61) for all women, no matter their state in life. She reflects Christ and instructs all her daughters to do the same. Mary is the model for all peoples, but especially for women.

When we recite the Most Holy Rosary, let us pray for women everywhere, that they may imitate Our Lady in her countless virtues.

Where would we be without women? No Mary . . . no Jesus . . . no mothers . . . no wives . . . no daughters . . . no sisters . . . no consecrated women . . . how impoverished our world—and depleted Heaven—would be!