Celebrating International Women’s Day
Becky Langworthy, pictured left, sponsors a young woman preparing to be received into the Catholic faith at this year’s Easter Vigil at St Christopher’s Cathedral in Canberra.
Friday 8 March marks International Women’s Day. How beautiful that the world offers a day to recognise and celebrate this gift!
Our femininity is not an accident or immaterial to our identity – it is at the very core of our being. It reveals who God created us to be, and something of His plan for our lives.
God made women to walk in and contribute to the world in a unique way – distinct but entirely complementary to the way our brothers are called to walk in, and contribute to, the world. We are equal, not because we are called to do the same things or offer the world the same gift, but because our world, our Church, and our families need us equally. This partnership, this complementarity, reveals the fullness of humanity!
This is particularly true within the Church. As the mystical Body, there is one head – Christ – and each member has a part to play. While the parts do not all fulfil the same function, they are equally important and essential to the health and wholeness of the Body.
As women, we are called to live out the feminine genius, which includes nurturing, receptivity, creativity, sensitivity, and generosity. We do this as daughter, sister, bride, and, as the pinnacle of our identity, mother.
Motherhood is the distinct identity of every woman – it is how we are called to enrich and transform the world. As Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross wrote, whatever our vocation, we are called to bless the world with our maternity, for “filled with the spirit of supernatural maternity, woman has the mission to win others over as children of God.”
That is not to say that there is one way to be a mother. The true beauty of our sisterhood is that we are each called to motherhood in different ways, whether spiritual or physical, shaped by our state of life, our context, our charisms, our talents. It is this invisible thread that binds us together and speaks to the very heart of what it means to be a woman. It is our vocation of enduring love.
This is why Saint John Paul II wrote of our Blessed Mother as the highest example of womanhood – she fully lives out her maternal identity and the feminine genius in every moment. In this way, we are called to emulate her, to be a mother to all those entrusted to our care, and to authentically live the feminine genius in the circumstances of our own lives.
In the canon of Saints, we see a diverse array of extraordinary, faithful mothers – Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Saint Catherine of Sienna, Saint Gianna Beretta Molla, Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, and Saint Mary of the Cross MacKillop, to name but a few. The Church and the world are unimaginable without their contribution. Their legacy does not lie in what they could do, but in this offering of themselves in alignment with God’s will.
So let us take this day to celebrate and encourage genuine respect and appreciation for women in their femininity and maternity, which is fundamental to addressing the challenges faced by our society.
May every woman embrace their unique identity and transform our world by freely sharing this gift.
A very happy International Women’s Day to you all!
- Becky Langworthy, is a member of the St Christopher’s Cathedral parish pastoral council.
Great piece Bec. Complementarity. That’s it!
Agreed. A fantastically truthful article Becky. Thanks
Another beautiful spiritual mother was St Francesca Cabrini, the first American saint. The movie of her life is showing at Dendy and Palace cinemas this Canberra Day long weekend and is well worth seeing.
Thank you Becky for your article. It is great to see many women engaging in the ideas around the place of women in the church. I particularly like your final sentence, but would simply change the last two words from ‘this gift’ to ‘their gifts’. I am uneasy with the term ‘complementarity’ because it seems to imply that all women and all men have the same gifts, whereas in my experience in life and the church, a person’s gifts depend not so much on their gender, but on their talents, their expertise, their personal experiences and their qualities as a person etc. I noticed that at the recent conference for Catholic women in Rome, ‘Women Leaders: Towards a Brighter Future’, our Australian Director of the Xavier Centre for Theological Formation at Australian Catholic University, Maeve Louise Heaney VDMF (Verbum Dei Community) from Brisbane, expressed her concern also about ‘complementarity’ saying “They speak of complementarity and name the contribution of women as essentially different to that of men,” she explained, “pitching love, spirituality and nurturing against authority, leadership and intellect.” I think she meant that we can all possess and offer a range of gifts, and our communities will be well served by such generosity.