Dignity

“It is the duty of every man to uphold the dignity of every woman.” (Pope Saint John Paul II).

The Crucifixion and Death of Jesus Christ (Blake Hughes)

I once heard someone say that all societies work better when the women in those societies are treated better.

As a woman, I sort of have a vested interest in believing that comment, but I have been reflecting on this in a spiritual sense as well…

Pope Saint John Paul II said, “It is the duty of every man to uphold the dignity of every woman.”

And I have been reflecting on this in the light of Christ’s treatment of women.  For a long time, women in the Church have been talking about their place in the Church…

When I was a little school girl, I remember spending a lot of time at school being taught about the place of women in the Church.  You see, there were no women at the Passover Meal, which was the Last Supper.  And this in itself was unusual.  And this means that certain things were reserved for men in the Church.  And in our modern age, this sort of attitude can be difficult to accept – after all, we women can do everything that a man can do – and to use the words of Ginger Rogers, the great dancer of the 1940s and 1950s, who danced with the legendary Fred Astaire, “I do everything that he does, only I do it backwards and in heels:…

And yet, there must be a reason that women have been delegated a different place in the Church away from the front and central place…

Perhaps it is a special gift to women?

After all, the Blessed Virgin stood at the foot of the Cross silently.  And Christ looked into her eyes with His pain and suffering.  In this way, it was a woman (and the other women who stood with Christ when most of the Apostles, who were men, deserted Him) who shared in the Passion of Christ…

She saw it.  She smelled it.  She watched the life seep out of His Human Body…

And in doing all of that, the Blessed Virgin suffered – silently – with Christ.

Perhaps – by being relegated (sometimes) to more silent functions of the Church – women are being asked to share in that silent witness and suffering of Christ?  Perhaps it is a quiet reminder of our true purposes – not to be big and noticeable – but to be small and silent, as the Virgin was…

And in her smallness and her silence, God made use of her and made her BIG!

“Above all, it is necessary to ask of God every morning the gift of perseverance, and to beg of the Blessed Virgin to obtain it for you, and particularly in the time of temptation, by invoking the name of Jesus and Mary as long as the temptation lasts. Happy the man who will continue to act in this manner, and shall be found so doing when Jesus Christ shall come to judge him. ‘Blessed is that servant, whom, when his Lord shall come, he shall find so doing’ (Matthew 24:46).” (Saint Alphonsus De Liguori, “Sermons”, at page 167).

And I have been thinking about the dignity of the women in the Church.  For there is a quiet dignity in the silence and in taking a back-seat, when everything inside me screams for attention…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.