Authentic Catholic Woman - Genevieve Kineke

Authentic Catholic Woman (eBook)

Genevieve Kineke (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
168 Seiten
Servant (Verlag)
978-1-63582-462-9 (ISBN)

What does it mean to be a woman today? Is there a one-size-fits-all answer? How can a woman be truly Catholic and truly feminine, hard-working and creative, and yet be at peace within? How does she nurture life at home, at school, on the job or in the culture? In this profound yet practical guide, Genevieve Kineke invites women to consider the Church, the Bride of Christ, as the model for authentic Catholic womanhood. 'The mission of women is inscribed in the mystery of the Church,' Pope John Paul II said. The author explores facets of this mystery—the Church as mother, bride, spouse and teacher, as sacramental, as font of wisdom, source of culture, and life-giving sanctuary—and reveals how women mirror the Church in their core identity. Faithful to this authentic identity, women will play a critical role in rebuilding a civilization of love and life.

What does it mean to be a woman today? Is there a one-size-fits-all answer? How can a woman be truly Catholic and truly feminine, hard-working and creative, and yet be at peace within? How does she nurture life at home, at school, on the job or in the culture? In this profound yet practical guide, Genevieve Kineke invites women to consider the Church, the Bride of Christ, as the model for authentic Catholic womanhood. "e;The mission of women is inscribed in the mystery of the Church,"e; Pope John Paul II said. The author explores facets of this mystery the Church as mother, bride, spouse and teacher, as sacramental, as font of wisdom, source of culture, and life-giving sanctuary and reveals how women mirror the Church in their core identity. Faithful to this authentic identity, women will play a critical role in rebuilding a civilization of love and life.

CHAPTER TWO

Mirroring the Sacraments of Initiation

A woman’s work is never done” is a truism to which we can all relate. Whether she pulls a paycheck or not, there is a sense in which a woman feels responsible for both her physical surroundings and the needs of the persons near her. She cannot help but notice various features of her environment, and often she struggles with whether to respond and how—sensing issues of domain, justice and exhaustion. Many times a woman will not respond for one reason or another and then wonder if she acted appropriately.

Catholics have known from the start that all that we do matters; whether or not anyone acts (or refrains from acting) and with what disposition of heart has a bearing on building the kingdom. The fact that God chose to “pitch His tent” in this world means for us that every work—even the most mundane—has a spiritual significance for ourselves and others.

The theology behind this is “incarnational.” The incarnation of the Word of God—Jesus’ taking on human flesh—allows us to lift human actions and enfold them in grace, joining them to His own sacrifice of love. We should recognize the privilege it is to join in Christ’s redemptive work. While we must be certain not to confuse this with “earning heaven” (which is impossible), this reality is both an incomprehensible mystery and a gracious gift of our loving God.1

One by one we’ll consider the sacraments and how they are used to build up the mystical body of Christ, and then it will become obvious how the everyday lives of women naturally mirror them. In this chapter in particular we will look at the three sacraments of hospitality, or initiation.

When we appreciate how our work fits into God’s plan of salvation, we can also establish some criteria that will help to gauge the best response to the needs around us. We can thus clarify the whole “hand-wringing” incidence of guilt, which can be very confusing and even debilitating. God does not want that for His daughters. Rather He wants us to meditate on the sacraments as channels of grace and reflect the supernatural life of the Church with our gifts of self, offered in love.

BAPTISM

The sacrament of baptism has two implications for the soul involved. The Catechism teaches, “Through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God; we become members of Christ, are incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission” (CCC, 1213). Thus we perceive the twofold effect of washing the person free of the stain of original sin and welcoming him or her into the Christian community. In everyday terms, since we wish to find ways to mirror the Church in an incarnational way, this dimension of the Church would be found ultimately in our efforts at cleaning and hospitality—which we easily recognize as two mainstays in the lives of women.

CLEANING IN THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST

It is almost comical to ask if cleaning is a part of our everyday activity. One dimension of the fall from grace is the chaos and disorder we inherited. Entropy reigns, and even good works are undone by time and the elements. From kitchen counters to beds, from noses to bottoms—nothing stays clean or in proper order for long.

Beyond the basic requirements of food, clothing and shelter, every culture has sought to keep disorder at bay. It is most often women who spend time, energy and resources on advancing the cause of cleanliness, order and even beauty. A constant source of irritation to all but the most saintly among us is that the good efforts we put into ordering our lives—making our surroundings attractive and cleaning for the sake of health—so quickly deteriorate into filth and disarray. Even when the human person is not directly to blame, the elements themselves break down: Dust and dirt appear, decay sets in and food becomes stale. What comes to mind is Sisyphus, forever pushing the enormous rock up the mountain only to have it come crashing down to the bottom just before reaching the top.

While Christians are mindful of the fact that this world is not our true home and that sin prevents the establishment of utopia, it is here that we can mirror the sacrament of baptism in the realm outside the soul. It is God’s gift to us that we can lift up our mundane tasks of washing and purifying and link them to Christ’s own work. What infinite meaning we can add to mopping up that spilled drink or cleaning out the broom closet one more time if we remember that we are imaging the sacrament of baptism.

To gain a better perspective, imagine the arenas in which women have worked at this over the millennia. In sunbaked deserts, frozen tundras, sweltering jungles and windswept prairies, what exhausting lengths women have had to go to in order to find water and maintain their humble surroundings. Some images from literature and history come to mind: battling the dust of the Australian outback, hanging laundry on lines strung between tenement buildings, creating order among the creeping wagon trains heading west on the American frontier, keeping sanitary the poor shacks of Southern slavery. If we compare our modern lives with its many conveniences to so many who have gone before us, we will see that it is at least easier now to tackle germs and debris.

Still we face the dreary fact that cleanliness must be pursued according to contemporary standards, whether it suits us or not, whether we’ll be appreciated or not and whether it will lead to lasting order or not. Disorder, just like sin, weighs us down hourly, daily, perpetually, and we must attack it with our trash barrels, vacuums and washrags till the trumpet sounds, signaling the consummation of the world.

In all honesty, what are our choices? We can clean it, or we can leave it unclean. With the latter being contrary to our hopes for a civilized life, the next choice is either to clean and join our effort to the work of Christ, or to clean and wallow in bitterness and self-pity. (Then there is the completely valid option of paying to have someone else clean for us. Odds are that this “someone else” will be a woman if the work has to do with the home or with children. And then the option is hers to have this mission of cleaning in the image of the Church.)

Stories about the late Mother Teresa abound, and one in this vein concerns a particular town in Russia. The authorities finally had invited the Missionaries of Charity into the country and even allowed them to work in a local hospital, but at the outset they were not allowed into the areas of the building where the patients were. Instead they were relegated to cleaning toilets—a task that they embraced without argument.

Day in and day out they scrubbed in the nastiest of conditions, and they offered up this work with their prayers for the apostolate. Unaware of their presence, the hospital staff underwent a subtle transformation: They began to speak civilly to one another, acts of kindness multiplied and the atmosphere changed to reflect the warmth of genuine charity. In a matter of time the nuns were invited to minister to patients. The humility of the sisters and their ability to lift up even “latrine duty” forged a path that would bear more visible fruit later.

How many congregations of consecrated women have faced that inevitable first day in new quarters—complete with mops, buckets, brooms and scrub brushes? Consider the warm and welcoming nuns over the centuries who have greeted their often malnourished and affection-starved students with a quick trip to the nearby hand pump or sink to wash up. How many mothers have tackled bedroom after bedroom, wondering at the abysmal living standards of their own dear children? How much of every mother’s day is spent keeping up with the trails of crumbs, the jam-smeared faces and the mounds of soiled laundry—no doubt grateful for not having to beat it on rocks in the local stream?

A beautiful point of reflection for this image are the women in Christ’s life who ministered to Him, primarily the Blessed Mother. She washed and swaddled Him countless times from the start and no doubt did it each time with great care and reverence. Imagine the attention with which she wiped the food from His face and the soil from his hands as a child.

Later Veronica would wipe the sweat and blood from His face during the Passion, and others would attend to His lifeless body after the Crucifixion. Several women were privileged to wash and anoint His corpse, and we know that, amid the tears and heartache, the whole event was laden with both natural and supernatural beauty.

What we must avoid is the pride involved in setting ourselves up as “too good” to simply clean. Even Christ washed His disciples, establishing an extraordinary precedent: God cleaning dirty human feet. Being too busy, being involved with other work or utilizing other gifts can certainly excuse one from much of the tedious and humble work of cleaning. Nevertheless we always will have opportunities to clean and provide order. It is for us to link this action with the sacraments. Both baptism and reconciliation are pertinent here, as the ongoing cleansing involved in regular confession is...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	15.5.2023
Vorwort	Christopher West
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
ISBN-10	1-63582-462-1 / 1635824621
ISBN-13	978-1-63582-462-9 / 9781635824629

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