“Do not let your hearts be troubled…” (John 14:1)
I struggled to remember these words as the priest gave his homily during the Mass I attended last week when the gospel passage for the day was from the gospel of Luke, 8: 1-3. The priest said Luke’s gospel was the one that focused most on Christ’s respect for women. I agreed, remembering how this gospel is my favorite for the same reason, and how I even named my son after this evangelist. Then the priest casually remarked about the “unfair” treatment of women in our Church, and how it was his belief they would soon be given the ability to join the ordained priesthood.
I shook my head sadly, and said a silent prayer.
I freely admit there was a time in my life I believed the Church was “incorrect” in some of its teachings. I believed the Church was in error regarding sexual morality, marriage and the use of birth control, and in its all-male priesthood.
I also freely admit that this belief was the fruit of being immersed in the culture of self-love that permeated my young life. Born in 1962, and graduating from a secular high school in 1980, I was marinated in the sexual revolution. I attended two secular state colleges that glorified this revolution. All the music I listened to, all the television programs I watched, all the movies I went to see in the theater, the romance novels and magazine articles that I read all served to influence my views.
And my reason was surely clouded by the sinful activities that developed as I continued along this path.
My parents were mostly unaware of my “other” life outside our home, and they lacked the words to teach me how to resist and counteract the culture. But thank God they rooted me in Catholic faith with in the example of their strong, faithful marriage and regular attendance at Mass. (They also sent me to a Catholic school during my grade school and middle school years.)
I would later discover in my searching for truth the “words” that would literally save my soul, now given to the Church by our Blessed John Paul II in his prayerful catechesis on sacred scripture called the Theology of the Body. His insightful reflections helped me to understand what I had long forgotten — those early yearnings of my childhood, almost drowned out in my teens and 20s, but never lost.
During those years in Catholic grade school, I developed a great love for our Blessed Mother that still remains with me today. I remember sneaking into Church at St. Francis Cabrini in Allen Park, Michigan during first grade recess to pray at her statue. I remember making a little shrine to her in my bedroom during the month of May. My favorite color has always been blue, and my favorite Church hymn then and now, is “Sing of Mary, pure and lowly, virgin mother undefiled…”
It is very likely that the heavenly prayers of this wonderful woman placed in my young heart a deep conviction to understand what it meant to be a woman. Despite my later sins and the effects of the culture, I nursed a seething desire to know and understand the gift of femininity and a burning desire to love and be loved. As I grew up, news stories of the mistreatment of women troubled me greatly, and I always knew in my heart this was very, very wrong.
Later on, I would nearly allow this disquiet to be stamped out of me by my own lifestyle choices. I would allow myself to be mistreated by men, and I mistreated them back.
Despite the many scars that remain from the sins of my past, I have been forgiven by God (in confession) and greatly blessed by Him. I am now in a sacramental marriage with a wonderful man. God has given us four children, and I now understand — with blinding clarity — what my sexuality, my incarnation as woman, means — to be a Mother, and to be impregnated by the Holy Spirit and birth “Christ” into this world.
In my next installment, I will elaborate further…
