How can a man dare to talk about womanhood? Perhaps we should rather ask, how can he dare not? Most of the wounds caused to women are actually inflicted by men. This is true also of the terrible wounds caused by neglect. Although some women do not help the situation by facilitating their objectification with pornography and the sex industry many of the women found in these situations are there because of men in the first place. So it is not only appropriate but necessary for men to speak about women and we might say that there is a necessary affirmation of femininity that must be made by men in order for justice to be restored.
The first thing we discover about women is that THE MAN, Jesus affirms them, or rather he himself personally experiences their pain. This is witnessed to in his words:
"Whatsoever you do to the least of my brethren you do to me" (Matthew 25:45)On the cross, His "loud cries" (Hebrews 5:7) were a summation of the cry of women who find themselves in so many oppressive and evil situations around the world. Most particularly this is true for those women in the womb who because of abortion never see the light of day, and also for the mothers who are led into the disturbing situation of aborting their own children because they find themselves alone, abandoned, or pressured by their husbands and boyfriends.
Jesus leads us, Pope John Paul II said in his Apostolic Letter On the Dignity and Vocation of Women,
"in the eyes of his contemporaries Christ became a promotor of women's true dignity and of the vocation corresponding to this dignity. At times this caused wonder, surprise, often to the point of scandal: "They marvelled that he was talking with a woman" (Jn 4:27), because this behaviour differed from that of his contemporaries." (12)He leads us to a kind of "rereading of Genesis" in light of women's dignity. Looking at the command of God to the man "to till the earth and keep it," (Genesis 2:15) or better to clarify that the Hebrew signifies "to guard it." Adam you dummy! You didn't guard it and you didn't guard your woman! You neglected her. You committed the first sin. The serpent shouldn't have ever been able to get near her but you weren't doing your job and so she fell. This shows us most of man's sins against women. Most of the wounds that women have are from neglect. How many unloved daughters, uncherished wives, unprotected sisters, un-cared-for mothers have to cry out to heaven and earth before man will hear them? They say that 60% of all abuse cases are actually neglect. How many women who became pregnant found themselves willfully neglected by the same man who is supposed to be a father and protecter of the child he has begotten?
Jesus also shows us the way he interacts with women by his encounter with the Samaritan woman in John 4:4-42. First of all, he talks to her. She, a Samaritan, a woman, and even an outcast among the women Samaritans, which is evident because she has avoided the morning crowd and has gone to the well at midday. Jesus asks her for a drink. This is the way many women first encounter the Lord. Non threatening thirsty, Jesus thirsts for a drink of their love, attention, and nurturing care when he presents himself to them in the children, in the poor, in the needy, to which many women respond generously. Then once he has started the conversation he moves them deeper into communion with himself by offering them the living Water of the Holy Spirit that step by step they see that Jesus is pleased to sit with them, to be with them, to affirm them as they are, but then bring them into God. He wasn't even swayed or put-off by her many broken relationships as others were, referring to the five men who were not her husbands. Realizing that Jesus loved her just as she is in all her brokenness, she went and told the whole town, evangelizing them about Jesus Christ the Messiah.
Men need to learn from Jesus how to lay our lives down for women. They need to learn how to lay down their male ego, which is actually quite difficult for men, so that they approach woman just as she is in all her feminine richness, not neglecting or avoiding her, but treasuring her as a gift.
Mary is the sign par excellence of the affirmation of womanhood. She is THE SIGN of the Scriptures of the love of God. This is found in Genesis 3:15 where the woman's offspring will crush the head of the serpent, in Isaiah 7:14 where the sign given to Ahaz is the virgin whose son is Emmanuel, the great sign of Revelations 12:1 of the woman clothed with the sun with the moon at her feet and a crown of twelve stars. It is also the sign given to the Magi and the shepherds for when
"they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage" (Matthew 2:11)This sign reveals Mary always together with Jesus, just as authentic femininity, to understand it should not be pitted against or compared with masculinity but never separated and seen as a complement. For woman and man are a gift one to the other and their true value is seen together in communion. This is the error of some strains of feminism which may seek to masculinize women making them equals to men. They are equal in human dignity of personhood but not in feminine dignity, which is very different than masculine dignity and vocation.
May the prayers of the Immaculate Virgin Mary help us to understand woman's true dignity and vocation.
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