Writing in “Mother of the Redeemer,” Pope John Paul says this about the call of woman in the world today:

The figure of Mary of Nazareth sheds light on womanhood as such by the very fact that God, in the sublime event of the Incarnation of his Son, entrusted himself to the ministry, the free and active ministry of a woman. It can thus be said that women, by looking to Mary, find in her the secret of living their femininity with dignity and of achieving their own true advancement. In the light of Mary, the Church sees in the face of women the reflection of a beauty which mirrors the loftiest sentiments of which the human heart is capable: the self-offering totality of love; the strength that is capable of bearing the greatest sorrows; limitless fidelity and tireless devotion to work; the ability to combine penetrating intuition with words of support and encouragement.¹

Writing more than sixty years earlier, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) says this about the feminine model presented by the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

Were we to present…the image of the purely developed character of spouse and mother as it should be according to her natural vocation, we must gaze upon the Virgin Mary.  In the center of her life stands her son.  She awaits His birth in blissful expectation; she watches over His childhood; near or far, indeed, wherever He wishes, she follows Him on His way; she holds the crucified body in her arms; she carries out the will of the departed.  But not as her action does she do all this: she is in this the Handmaid of the Lord; she fulfills that to which God has called her. ²

Once again Mary, our Spiritual Mother, shows us how to fulfill our call.  If we are to be imbued with the Spirit of the Gospel and mirror “the loftiest sentiments of which the human heart is capable,” Jesus Christ must stand in the center of our lives and we must be a handmaid of the Lord.

This is an excerpt from the book, “Full of Grace: Women and the Abundant Life” by Johnnette Benkovic. Copyright © 1998, 2004 By Johnnette S. Benkovic. All rights reserved.

^{1 Pope John Paul II, “Mother of the Redeemer, par. 46. Emphasis added.}

^{2 Edith Stein, “Ethos of Women’s Professions,” from The Collected Works of Edith Stein, vol. 2, Essays on Woman, trans. Freda Mary Oben (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1987), 48-49}