It seems to me – as a woman – that I should be aiming to be generous with my time and effort and body. I should be offering everything to God.
God loves women.
Even though it was Eve who committed the very first sin and who encouraged Adam to join her in her sin, God loves women.
Even though the punishment of Eve was to suffer the pangs of childbirth and to labour to bring forth children, God loves women.
After all, is not the Blessed Virgin the new Eve? The most perfect soul ever created is the soul of the Blessed Virgin. And she was a woman. In fact, she was a woman so revered that God set her above even the angels as Queen of Heaven.
And God loves women because they follow Him…
“Jesus went on through cities and villages, preaching and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means.” (Luke 8:1-3).
When I was at school, our school chaplain told us that the religious education of girls was – in his mind – even more important than the religious education of boys. And he believed this because he believed that it was the mothers in the families who had the greatest impact on the religious formation of the children – who are the future of the family…
And – though this in no way diminishes the importance of men and fathers in the family – I tend to see what the priest was trying to explain to us all those years ago…
Because he saw how much God loves women in a special way because He gave a woman the opportunity to be Queen of Heaven…
And it seems to me – as a woman – that I should be aiming to be generous with my time and effort and body. I should be offering everything to God.
You see, Saint John Vianney lived in poverty. He worse only old torn cassocks, he ate a few boiled potatoes each day and eh slept on the floor. But when he went to the marketplace, he would accept nothing less than the best. In the markets of Lyon, he was famous for saying, “This is not good enough for God, I need the best!” Saint Francis of Assisi was the same…
And I have been thinking about that today. For it seems to me that there are just so many things that I could be doing to reciprocate the love of my Lord. For God loves women and it seems to be that as a woman I am called to follow Him and minister to Him. And instead, I sit quietly in the background and stare blankly at the ceiling, hoping that He would never try to pick me to help Him at all…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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