Woman, God, Life, and Church

Woman, you are a gift!

From the first presentation of woman to man in the Garden of Eden, the gift of who you are is nothing less than "wow!" Your dignity comes from the gift of your being, and the gift of your being was created feminine.

Man saw your profound and complementary gifts right away, and rejoiced. In God's first act of blessing humanity, the Creator smiled upon and blessed the union of the first couple, encouraging them be fertile and multiply (Gen. 1:28).

Their loving union was a blessed gift to each other, and their offspring, delivered through woman's maternity, was designed to be a visible sign of that blessing, another gift.

Then sin entered the world. For their failures the woman and man suffered grievous losses, and because we are their progeny, our own pains followed.

Tragically, humanity has habitually lost sight of the true gifts we are to one another, and the treasure of maternity was rarely appreciated as the blessing it is, until Jesus, the Savior of all, was born of a woman.

In and through Mary, the world heard once more: Woman , you are a gift!

Blessed John Paul II was especially eager to teach that women, by the beauty of their physiology and God-given design, are particularly well-disposed to seeing, comprehending, and loving human persons. This is our "feminine genius . " This particular strength of woman bears repeating and rediscovery as we survey the political rhetoric of the day that tends degrades maternity, especially on the 40 th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

The late pontiff's major treatise on women, " Mulieris Dignatatem , " exults in the dignity and beauty of femininity. The gift of maternity, he wrote is a strength, not a weakness.

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. . . .

A woman is strong because of her awareness of this entrusting . . . 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. ( Mulieris Dignatatem, par 30)

There's no mistaking biology. Womanly bodies are wonderfully made, and purposefully created with an empty space of a womb carried under her heart.

A woman's womb, her uterus, signals that she is made for something and someone more than herself. This reality touches a woman at her very core—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The womb's raison d'être illuminates this gift that welcomes and receives the life of a child, sheltering and nurturing it, until finally, a woman gives birth. We even use the expression— giving birth —denoting the gift that it is. The maternal gift ought to be honored and celebrated.

What's more, a pregnant mother is entrusted with carrying an immortal soul besides her own—a soul that is destined for eternity. That's why a woman really needs to be aware of the dignity of her feminine creation, and the sublime gift of her maternity, so she can confer that dignity on her child, and upon others through her love of life.

The gift of maternity is inherent in all women. They are predisposed to motherhood by their design. Yet, as we know, not all women bear children. Even if a woman never gives birth, a woman's life is still inclined toward mothering. All women are entrusted with the call to care for the people within their sphere of influence. This broadens our ideas of maternity beyond gestation and lactation.

A woman's relationships with others, even though they may not be fruitful biologically, can be fruitful spiritually. Therefore a woman's life—her feminine genius—is characterized by physical and/or spiritual motherhood.

When the gift of a woman's fertility and maternity are devalued, they are misinterpreted as liabilities or threats to a woman's potential happiness, or earning power, or freedom.

Both women and men are crippled when disrespect for any of the gifts of the other are ignored, stifled, abused, or rejected. But women are demeaned when this precious part of them is reduced to a faculty to be managed, rather than a capability to be treasured.

Our beautiful maternity, and the lives and loves that issue forth from it, is why the Church continues to stand in defense of chastity and marriage, along with its opposition to the use of contraception, abortion of the unborn, and any other threat to human life.

Finally, dear woman, here's something else the Church teaches: if we've failed to live up to this teaching on maternity, if we've disrespected or abused the beautiful gifts of our womanhood, we can make our way back. The gifts of grace and forgiveness through the sacraments provide that path.

Let us trust that grace. Let us be gentle and generous in dealing with our own failures as regards our sexuality or our maternity. Jesus wants us to be healed, and especially to be healed of wounds related to our sexuality and maternity.

Let us come to Him with our brokenness, and the sins against our genius of maternity, no matter how grievous or painful.

Let us come to know this God who came through the womb to save us.

This article originally appeared in the Washington Post online, January 22, 2013.