The Mystery of the Woman
by Sister Louise Hélie
Sr. Louise Hélie |
|
“What a grace to be a woman,” Marie-Paule said to us one day, “and to carry out the mission proper to us, as God had planned it!” (Mother’s Day letter, May 2006) Every woman is entitled to ask herself what really is the mission proper to her, reserved for her. In order to be able to reply to that question, it is necessary, first of all, to have a good knowledge of self and of the grandeur of the woman. In today’s world in which values are reversed, the “great women” are those who have succeeded in coordinating life as a couple and a hectic career, those who have a perfect body and who make it in show business or those who have money and have a reputation in the world..., but the true grandeur of the woman is something quite different!
THE MYSTERY OF THE CO-REDEMPTION
Jesus, speaking to His Apostles, said to them one day: “I tell you that there is great strength in the heart of a woman. In her heart. As in the intelligence of us men. And I tell you that the situation of women is about to change with regard to customs as well as with regard to many other things. And it will be just because a Woman will obtain grace and redemption particularly for women as I will do for all men.... The Woman will have, She has in Herself, what defeats the Enemy. So She has been redeeming since She existed. An active, although concealed redemption. But She will soon come out in the presence of the world, and women will be fortified in Her.” (Maria Valtorta, The Poem of the Man-God, vol. 4, p. 607)
In those few lines, we see the whole mystery of the Co-Redemption extending from Calvary to the opening of the Kingdom. In the same sentence, Jesus uses two verb tenses: the present and the future. The Woman, Mary of Nazareth, who possesses within herself what defeats the Enemy, and The Woman, Marie-Paule, who will also have what defeats Satan. In fact, she has come out in the presence of the world, at the head of her army, and in her and through her example, women who have enrolled under her banner will be fortified.
Last September 14 marked Mother Paul-Marie’s 90th birthday, she, the “Woman par excellence” whose role was to crush the Serpent under her heel, he who, through the complicity of a woman, stole the earth from man. This time was reserved to The Woman, and no one has understood the true nature, the very essence of the woman more than her, her greatness, her dignity and, above all, the place she holds in the Father’s plan of love.
Mother Paul-Marie’s mission was that of the Co-Redemption, and it is the narration of that mission which is found in the pages of Life of Love. Who better than Jesus could speak to us of that mission, our Mother’s mission? In a talk to the Apostles, He told them: “Can God from His glory be present at the sins consumed within the walls of the Temple? Another Tabernacle was necessary, a holy one, to be a star leading errant people back to the Most High. And that is accomplished in the Co-Redemptrix Who throughout the ages will rejoice at being the Mother of the redeemed. ‘You shall shine with a bright light. All the peoples of the Earth will prostrate themselves before You. The nations will come to You from afar bringing gifts and will worship the Lord in You... They will invoke Your great name... Those who will not listen to You will be among those cursed, and blessed will be those who gather round You... You will be happy in Your children because they will be the blessed ones gathered near the Lord.’ The true hymn of the Co-Redemptrix. And the angels who see are already singing it in Heaven... The new heavenly Jerusalem begins in Her. Oh! Yes, that is the truth. And the world is unaware of Her...” (Id., vol. 4, pp. 607-608)
St. Joan of Arc |
St. Teresa |
Mother Teresa |
Mother |
And, unfortunately, many want to ignore her out of contempt and out of self-importance. If a lack of knowledge can still be excused, a deliberate blindness cannot be. Those who reject God’s Work have a great responsibility. As it was in Christ’s time, some have wanted to close the access to the Kingdom. They have locked the door and thrown the key far away in order to prevent people from having access to it, not having wanted to enter into it themselves. However, Heaven not being limited in its means, it was able to pass in another way.
In fact, from the very first articles in the paper Marie, Marie-Paule wrote: “The Commander in Chief of the Celestial Armies is going to surprise people, for she comes with her feminine psychology which will disarm the greatest theologians.” (Les Éditoriaux Marie, p. 135) In fact, “the more a woman is holy,” Léon Bloy declared, “the more she is woman.” (La femme pauvre, Mercure de France, p. 59) But, when the woman adorns herself with all the jewels of the rainbow of holiness, she is no longer simply a woman, she becomes “The Woman”!
*
From all times, there have been extraordinary women who, despite their poor strength or a ruined health, accomplished great works which have come down through the centuries, the genius of which we can still admire today. One need only think of Judith, Joan of Arc or Mother Teresa, to name but a few. But there are two, in particular, who have marked their era and to whom it is worth granting a greater consideration. They are: Saint Teresa of Avila and Mother Paul-Marie. Those two women, doctors of the Church, were able to guide souls along mystical ways and show us the road leading to heaven. But, above all, those two women fully understood and lived their state of womanhood with all the richness and mystery inherent in it.
THE FEMININE PSYCHOLOGY
The psychology of the woman consists, above all, in living with her heart rather than with her head. For that reason, she does not always follow human logic. Generally speaking, she is a mystery for man in the development of their relationships with each other and often she is an unsuspected mystery for herself.
“This feminine complexity did not escape Saint Teresa’s penetrating gaze. ‘You amuse me,' she wrote to Father Mariano on October 21, 1576, ‘when you say that you will know her when you see her. We women are not that easy to get to know. You have been hearing their confessions for years and you are astounded, one day, to discover how you have misunderstood them; that is because they do not know themselves either when they tell you their sins, and you judge them according to what they tell you.’ ” (Dominique Deneuville, Sainte Thérèse d’Avila et la Femme, p. 31)
Teresa knows full well that if, too often, the woman conceals her real intentions, she also holds in reserve in her heart incommensurable possibilities of generosity and oblation.
“Teresa teaches us that the human being finds his peace, his balance and his fulfillment in God, and in God alone. A person is balanced who has found a focus, a center, established himself and maintained himself there. Now the focus or center of man is God and God alone. The secret of equilibrium, even a human equilibrium, is union with God through love and mental prayer. The more intimate is this union with God, the more elevated and sound is the balance.
Laura Bégin Giguère |
“The woman can only be truly herself when she belongs to God. Instinctively, the woman is possessive, but she can, through a transfiguration wrought by grace, become an offering, an oblation. It is important that those who help her do not forget her tremendous spiritual possibilities.” (Id., p. 13)
That is how it was that Mama Laura initiated Marie-Paule to the giving of self from childhood, to the point where Marie-Paule took pleasure in rendering service wherever she went. Her life of offering began at a very early age when, at the age of 12, she offered herself up to God to save souls. Then, on the family level, she offered up her life to cure her father of alcoholism. Finally, her life of oblation would become ecclesial, and then universal, to the point of saying: “I ask of you the world, Lord.” (Life of Love, vol. III, p. 56), and in order to obtain it, she was prepared to pay the price. Then that which summed up her life became: “All for God, nothing for myself.” (White Book I, Eucharistic Graces, p. 44)
MARY, THE MODEL OF PERFECTION
The Virgin Mary, |
If Marie-Paule and Teresa of Avila were able to exploit and discover so fully their feminine nature, that is because they took as their model Mary, the Masterpiece of creation. In an article written by Bishop van Lierde in 1974, he showed us the outstanding qualities of the feminine psychology:
“The first is intuition. While the man, with his intellect, burrows through to an understanding of things by analyzing their nature, the woman comprehends them by intuition. She senses, almost divines, the substance of things without understanding their nature.... She has the gift of nuances...
“Woman’s second quality is... nobility of heart. Thus, woman is possessed of a thoughtfulness, a devotedness, which become, within the realities of each day, generosity, silent sacrifice, even heroism...” (Life of Love, vol. IX, p. 240)
In Life of Love, we can amply see this thoughtfulness of heart emerging from the events and Marie-Paule’s gestures or actions. What charity couches her words so as not to hurt another; and with what love she envelops her children in order to ease the sufferings they bear because of a selfish father who has gone astray. That is truly a heart that loves to the point where it hurts to love so much!
“This thoughtfulness of heart is also found in Saint Teresa. Let us listen to her admit the suffering she feels as she leaves her Daughters to travel from one monastery to the next: ‘Loving them as I do, I can assure you that having to separate myself from them was not the smallest of crosses. I suffered especially when I thought that I would not see them again and I witnessed their sorrow and their tears.’
“Her maternal instinct was also manifest in her writings through a rather frequent use of affectionate possessives: ‘I will write to my Jeronimo de Cepeda.’ ‘Recall my memory to my children; I long to see them.’ ” (Dominique Deneuville, op. cit., pp. 118 and 122)
BURNING WITH THE VERY LOVE OF THE FATHER
Those two souls were not afraid to show their affection towards their neighbor, to let the excess of their love overflow upon those who approached them, for the center of that love was God Himself. It is the Father’s love itself that passes through them in order to spread over the creatures. This consuming love burns them and only finds relief when it spreads to others. “To give oneself, to forget oneself, to love, to pardon, to welcome, to console, to form, such are the beneficent qualities that crown the true mother, for they have the power to effect the most noble and the most deeply meaningful upliftings and realizations.” (Marie-Paule, Mother’s Day letter, May 2006)
One might think that those women were exceptions, born with an unfailing courage. And yet, “life shows that the feminine courage is in the measure, above all, of the love that sustains it.” (Dominique Deneuville, op. cit., p. 115)
Dominique Deneuville, in his book entitled Thérèse d’Avila et la Femme [Teresa of Avila and the Woman], described her in these terms: “Moreover, her courage, as obvious as it was, does not appear so much as a fundamental disposition of nature but rather as the result of an extreme self-mastery and the fruit of divine grace. Father Ibanez has us remark that, before receiving the great mystical graces, Teresa was a timid woman. That is also the saint’s thinking in several passages of her Life, even though she indicated at the beginning of her narration, ‘the courage given her by her nature’.” (Id., p. 118)
Yes, the feminine courage is in the measure, above all, of the love that sustains it. And when that love is the God of love, then no obstacle can discourage those souls enamored with God. “The flame of their zeal for the salvation of souls, which has its source in theological charity, makes use of this vital need of fecundity which God Himself deposited in the woman’s being.” (Id., p. 122)
THE WOMAN IS MADE TO LOVE
For the woman is a mother; she is made to pass on life, whether it be on the physical, psychic, spiritual or moral levels. In her writings, Marie-Paule gave us a very beautiful definition of the woman: “The true woman is composed of love and pardon.” (Life of Love, vol. I, p. 222) That is the very essence of her being, that is what prompts her throughout her entire life, providing that life finds its source in the God of love.
Jesus was also in complete agreement with this when He said to the Apostles: “A woman knows how to love. She was made to love. She degraded love into sensual lust, but true love, the gem of her soul, is still imprisoned in the depth of her heart: love devoid of foul sensual mud, made of angelical wings and perfumes, of pure flame and remembrances of God, of its origin from God and its creation by God. Woman: the masterpiece of goodness near the masterpiece of creation, which is man.” (Maria Valtorta, The Poem of the Man-God, vol. 2, p. 62)
Nicole Échivard, an author, wrote: “In the order of sin, the woman is ‘dominated’ by man, caught, used. It is the order of power. In the order of love, it is more the woman who is ‘given’, who gives of herself. She is the master of her gift. In the free order of love, she has the preeminence, and that is because, in the order of creation, she is the one, first of all, who is ‘lovable’, who is loved, who was made to be loved.” (Femme, qui es-tu?, p. 165)
And since love and suffering go hand in hand, the woman’s great capacity to love is also in proportion to her capacity to suffer. Jesus, speaking to the women disciples, said to them one day:
“Man is never very strong in suffering. Women, instead, as compared to men, enjoy the true kingliness of being able to suffer. Teach men, supporting them in the hours of fear, discouragement, tears, tiredness and bloodshed....
“And you My friends [Apostles and disciples], endeavour to acquire the humbleness and firmness of women, and demolishing manly pride, do not despise the women disciples, but mitigate your strength, and I would say also your hardness and your intolerance, in contact with the kindness of women. And above all, learn from them how to love, to believe and to suffer for the Lord, because I solemnly tell you that they, the weak ones, will become the strongest in faith, in love, in daring, in sacrificing themselves for their Master, Whom they love with their whole selves, without asking for anything, without pretending anything, satisfied only with loving to give Me solace and joy. (Maria Valtorta, op. cit., pp. 63, 64-65)
Yes, there you have what the woman’s role is in the Father’s initial plan: to be love at the heart of the world. The woman’s being is like a vase containing a precious perfume. When, through mortification and a life of sacrifice, the flask breaks, then a perfume of love spreads all around and upon all those beings who come close to it, and each one can breathe in the perfume. That is what Mother Paul-Marie did with her life, and that is also what all those who walk in her footsteps must do.
Sister Louise Hélie, O.FF.M.