May 11, 2005

Since I’ve become a Sister, I have been the happy recipient of a few Mother’s Day cards. Why would someone send a celibate woman a Mother’s Day card? Because she is very much called to be a mother!

Motherhood is part of the feminine vocation. Whether a woman is called to marriage, to single life, or to consecration as a religious, she is called to and indeed created for motherhood. God has entrusted women in a particular way with the gift of the person. She has been made to carry and to nurture life. This is a characteristic of her body and of her soul. The whole of the woman is directed toward life, toward persons, toward others.

In the beginning, before the devastation that befell humanity with “original sin”, man and woman saw one another as they truly were. They saw and knew the reality of what it meant to be a human person, body and soul, made in the image and likeness of God – made for one another. In the beginning, they knew their mutual dignity; they understood perfectly their roles and their differences and they were utterly satisfied to be complementary persons. Man was able to see clearly what now is obstructed. We now look at one another and struggle to see persons and not mere objects. We fight our lower nature to truly love one another without possessing or controlling the beloved, and to give ourselves as a gift.

The modern woman, like the ancient woman Eve – mother of all the living, is being tempted to shun the beauty of authentic femininity and subsequently motherhood. Instead of being utterly satisfied to be complementary to man, we seek to compete with him. I think we will find the peace we seek when we realize our profound dignity as children of God – when we appreciate the mutual complementarities of men and women and allow our feminine quality to ripen into the self-giving love of motherhood.

Because we live in an age when war has been waged against the gift of life, particularly against the unborn child, war has also been waged against women. Perhaps we could say that the war against women was the first step in the war against all life. A renewal in our understanding and appreciation and living-out the gift of motherhood would be a beautiful beginning to a “new springtime”.

Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of us all, PRAY FOR US!

Sr. Clare Marie Matthiass, CFR
Local Servant, Our Lady of Guadalupe Convent, Bronx, New York
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