The Feminine Genius

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“St. Paul had taught that the “more excellent way” and the greatest of the theological virtues was love (1 Cor.12.31).  John Paul suggests that what he terms the “feminine genius” is the “place” of this more excellent way in the world and the Church.  “In God’s eternal plan,” he writes, “woman is the one in whom the order of love in the created world of persons first takes root.”  Because love is the inner dynamic of the life of God, women’s experience has a unique dignity, and that dignity is to be measured not by the dominating and male order of power, but “by the order of love, which is essentially the order of justice and charity.”  That dignity gives rise to a vocation to love, which can be discerned in the fact that “the human being is entrusted by God to women in a particular way.”  Here was a basic issue with untold, profound implications for humanity.”  Witness to Hope by George Weigel

JMJ

The order of justice and charity gives the human being the essential vocation of love lived in every person made in the image and likeness of God.  Woman, in her unique dignity is the first to form and take root this order of love in the creation of being.  She, in God’s eternal plan, carries within her womb the beginning of life, from the moment a human person is conceived into existence.  The very calling of woman brings forth the vocation of love, as God entrusts to her a human being hidden within the very womb of her human body.  The feminine genius brings forth the virtue of love as she carries the child within her womb with care and diligent love as she awaits the coming of his birth.  The sacrifice she portrays in this beholds to man the “more excellent way” and the greatest of the theological virtues of charity towards the dignity of life entrusted to her by God.  It is in woman alone that God in His eternal plan has allowed this work of creation and has begun a new life that is awaited to begin from the moment of conception to natural death.  How great are the depths and the heights of God!  How inscrutable His judgment, that He in His awesome wonder has bestowed on woman the gift and entrustment of human life hidden within her very womb.  No greater love hath he than to lay down one’s life for one’s friend.  The mystery of life is entrusted to her in the gift of her motherhood and femininity. 

What interior disposition is there in a woman, who denies the life within her womb to continue as she is given the choice of abortion?  The very thought and consideration of such an evil, has already destroyed the heart of the child within her.  The very vocation of motherhood, engrained into her whole being, is torn from her in an action that eliminates the very dignity of her calling.  Her blood runs through his blood, her thoughts run through his thoughts, indeed every form of nourishment she receives comes through the heart of the child hidden within her womb.   God, in His infinite goodness, created him and brought him into existence and invokes woman to embrace him until he is ready to behold the world. 

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.  Reveal to Man the abomination found in the act of abortion.  Restore to woman the dignity of life that she is destined to fulfill in the gift of her femininity through the grace of her motherhood.  You have bestowed on woman alone the gift of humanity as she carries life hidden within her womb.  May she hold this entrustment You confidently give her, as a treasure to defend and protect against the deceits of a culture that is blind to the truth of the value of life from the moment of conception.  May she not be deceived by the works of a law system that legalizes the right to deny her very vocation and calling as mother through the destruction of abortion.  Raise up holy men and women who defend the life of the unborn, in all its truth and all its reality so that the confusion that is reigning in our world today will not degrade the dignity and vocation of woman any longer.  O Mary, my Dearest Mother, You who are most blessed among women, pray for us who have recourse to thee.  Amen.