In our last newsletter, we looked at woman's high and sacred calling to radical femininity in an era of ungodly and radical feminism. We discussed how the feminist agenda has been used by Satan to tear down our society, and how womanhood, as created by God, has been maligned and subverted. The primary attack has come upon woman's pivotal role in living out the beauty and purity, the mystery and sacredness of her womanhood. All that is truly feminine-the loveliness of her body, the sacredness of the fruit of her womb, her ability to nurture, her intuitiveness and relational skills-has been denigrated, sneered at, and belittled.
   Perhaps the most damaging of all has been the assault on woman's sexuality, and the immorality which that attack has brought about. Frederica Mathewes-Green writes, "'Reproduction rights' (meaning the right to kill unborn children) is the evil outcome of this vicious attack. In striving for equality with man, woman has all but destroyed herself. As professor Sidney Callahan has said, 'We will never climb to equality over the dead bodies of our own children.'"1
   We spoke last time of the ways in which God created man and woman equal (no striving is necessary to gain this equality!) and of how man and woman are different and complementary. We then looked briefly at The Privilege of Womanhood and The Mystery of Womanhood. Now we will turn our attention to three other important areas: the supernatural mission of womanhood, the power of womanhood, and the Sacrament of Marriage.
   The Supernatural Mission of Womanhood Feminists insist that woman will never find her true fulfillment in the menial tasks of motherhood and homemaking. This is the secular view touted by those who are "enlightened" in our modern world. Secularists are unable, and often unwilling, to look to the God who created us for His supernatural mission for woman, which is to bring forth life and to be a guardian of all that is holy and sacred regarding this noble task.
   Motherhood is the high calling of every woman whether or not she is ever a biological mother. Every woman has been given nurturing skills and has been called to bring forth life-abundant life-spiritual as well as physical. Woman's very soul is maternal.
   God created in woman the gift of receptivity, which is an active response not a passive one. Her receptivity is a giving of herself, a self-donation. It is not a passive succumbing to the aggression of others. Rather, it is an imitation of God's love which is never self-seeking, but always self-giving, laying down one's life for another. The married woman joyfully gives herself to her husband in order to become fruitful by him, to conceive in her womb a new life with an immortal soul created in God's image. Then she continues to love as God loves as she nurtures this child with her own body and walks through the pangs of childbirth to bring this new creation into the world. Her self-giving love then nurtures this little one through each step along the path to manhood or womanhood. Mothering-being maternal-means to nurture, to reach out to the helpless, the small, the weak. This is why abortion not only murders the innocent unborn child, but it spiritually destroys the mother as well, tearing to shreds her sacred call to maternity.
   Even though as adults we often forget the pain and suffering our mothers endured to bring us forth and the sacrifices they made on our behalf throughout the years, even though we drift away from our mothers for any number of reasons, when the going gets tough, our inner beings cry out for our mother. My father-in-law, who fought at the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, attests to the fact that many soldiers cried out for their mothers as they were breathing their last breath.
   In the movie The Passion of the Christ, there is a poignant scene when Mary breaks through the crowd and drops to the ground to meet her Son face to face as He falls under the weight of the cross. Their deep exchange was unfathomable, but I believe I heard her say, "My son, I am here." Then there was a flashback to Jesus' childhood where He fell and Mary ran to comfort Him and kiss His wound. Mary, mother of the Son of God, was modeling for all women their supernatural, God-given mission.
   When woman ceases to walk in her divine mission, society crumbles. To swim against the tide of our degenerating culture, let us as Christian women fulfill our sacred calling to bring forth and nurture life in whatever way God may lead us. Let us stand against the culture of death by proclaiming life in all we do, day after day. This is radical femininity.
   The Power of Womanhood The power of woman to influence mankind should never be underestimated. This God-given power may be corrupted and used for evil and destruction, as we see in the Garden of Eden with Eve and in the royal court of King Ahab with Jezebel, or it can be used for good and for the building up of society as we see in the lives of St. Catherine of Siena and Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
   Woman's greatest strength lies in her moral character. When she uses this strength wisely, her ability to undergird her husband and nurture her children, her sensitivity to God, and her commitment to prayer can turn the tide of society. Indeed, society is safe when woman is walking in her godly femininity, carrying out her supernatural mission.
   In "The Dragon Seed", Pearl S. Buck quotes Confucius, "Where the woman is faithful, no evil can befall. The woman is the root and the man is the tree. The tree grows only as high as the root is strong."2 Later she writes, "The strongest thing on earth is a woman."3 Mother Virginia, the retired superior of All Saints Convent in Catonsville, Maryland, teaches the same thing. She states that a woman can either double or half a man. How true! Woman has the power to call out the best in a man, not by nagging, manipulating, or commanding, but by her godly example, encouragement, gentle persuasion, wisdom, and discernment-all sanctified by a life of prayer. When she lives up to her calling, when she loves as Christ loves, her influence on her family, church, and society is immeasurable. What she lacks in physical strength, she more than compensates for in moral character.
   How misleading is the feminist push to be equal to (meaning the same as) men. Woman wields far more power when she is walking in her true femininity. She has the power to shape and mold the hearts and souls of men, no small task. Walking in radical femininity means focusing on our relationship with God, being attentive to the formation of our own souls, and building our own moral character so that we can rightly influence others and bring life to our culture of death.
   The Sacrament of Marriage Celibacy for the kingdom of God is a vocation given to some and is a gift to the Church. It declares to the world that man's ultimate desire for union can only be satisfied in God, and thereby, it declares the spiritual nature of marital union. However, the primary vocation God has created in order to live out our masculinity and femininity is the first sacrament initiated by God and the bedrock of society: marriage. A sacrament makes visible that which is invisible. The nuptial union between man and woman is a visible sign of the ultimate union between God and man. God created us-male and female-for union with Him; He wants to betroth us to Himself forever (Hosea 2:19). He desires to marry us! Therefore God has stamped this message into our bodies (which are visible) to help us see the reality of our ultimate union with God (which is as yet invisible).
   A man's physical body makes no sense by itself; neither does the woman's physical body make sense by itself. But seen in the light of each other, we see a call to the holy communion of love, the deep, eternal love which exists within the Trinity itself. Man and woman were both made in God's image, and in the love expressed in the spousal embrace, they represent the union God has with His Church.
   The New Testament is the story of the Eternal Bridegroom (Jesus Christ) who became incarnated in the flesh of a man, who gave up His body for His bride (the Church) so that we could become one flesh with Him.
   Genesis 2:24 says, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." Jesus left His Father in heaven and His mother on earth to be joined to His Church. Marital love is a reminder to the world of what Christ did, giving His body out of love for His bride. Every act of marital conjugal love is symbolic of this profound mystery, referring to Christ and His Church and foreshadowing the eternal union with Christ.
   God calls us to love as God loves by giving ourselves as a gift to one another. As we receive God's love and abide in it day by day, we become transformed by that love and can then give the gift of authentic love to one another. This authentic, self-giving love is clearly expressed in marital conjugal love. The eternal mystery of Christ's union of love with His Church can only be symbolized within the Sacrament of Marriage, and most profoundly, within the conjugal act itself, when husband and wife share a heart attitude of giving themselves to one another as a gift.
   Pope John Paul II strongly contends that our rejection of God's plan for life and love which God stamped in our bodies as male and female is at the root of all evil.4 If the body was created by God to reveal and make visible, to symbolize, the divine mystery of union with God, where do you think Satan will attack? Evil is the distortion of that which is good and beautiful. Immorality is the counterfeit of the marital union. It is taking for oneself, not giving of oneself; it is lust, not love. The things which are the most sacred are those which are most violently profaned. And nothing is more profaned in our culture than our human sexuality.
   Christopher West shares the following understanding of sexuality in our culture. The word symbolic (Greek: symbalein) means to unite, bring together, gather up; while the word diabolic (Greek: diabolein) means to break apart, scatter, rupture. "God's eternal plan for the body is union, communion, marriage; this brings life. Satan's counter-plan for the body is separation, fracture, divorce; this brings death. A fallen world, then, is a world of estranged spouses: estrangement between divinity and humanity; heaven and earth; soul and body; spirituality and sexuality; sacredness and sensuality; masculinity and femininity."5 Jesus Christ, through His Incarnation, His coming-in-the-flesh, has unified spirit and flesh. He has healed the rupture between body and soul which occurred at the Fall. Therefore, we can, by our own free will and with the grace of God, reject the diabolical estrangement of the fallen world and walk in all that is good and pure and holy, in all that symbolizes the divine mystery of love between Christ and His Church.
   Now let us turn to St. Paul's magnificent, although misunderstood and often maligned, teaching on marriage in Ephesians 5:21-33. Here we have the powerful head and body analogy: "For the husband is head of the wife as Christ is head of the Church. . ." (vs. 23). The husband, then, is a symbol, an icon of Christ, and the wife is an icon of the Church. The husband is to mirror Christ and love his wife as Christ loved His Church and laid down His life for her in self-sacrificing, self-giving love. The wife is to receive that gift of love and respond by giving herself totally in love, as did Mary, the mother of the Church and our example of radical, sacred femininity.
   St. Paul goes further-and the feminists, who have no understanding of giving oneself to another as a gift of love, revolt at this statement-"Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. . . . Now as the Church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything" (vs 21 & 24 NIV). St. Paul does not hate women, nor does he advocate male domination or subjection to tyranny. Christopher West points out that a word study of submission gives us insight on this passage: the prefix "sub" means "under" while "mission" means one who is sent with authority to perform a particular service. The wife, then, is under the mission of her husband. And what is that mission? To love his wife!6 Pope John Paul II states it this way: "In imaging Christ and the Church, 'the husband is above all he who loves, and the wife, on the other hand, is she who is loved.' Thus we can conclude that 'the wife's "submission" to her husband, understood in the context of the entire passage . . . signifies above all 'the experiencing of love.' All the more so since this 'submission' is related to the image of the submission of the Church to Christ, which certainly consists in experiencing His love.'"7
   Radical femininity, then, consists of receiving authentic, life-giving, healing love from our Lord Jesus Christ, and, for married women, from our husbands. This is the sublime plan God has designed for woman which secularists so violently oppose and seek to denigrate. We must stand against the forces of evil with the armor of Christ surrounding us, and we must stand in prayer for those whose eyes remain closed to the truth.8
   Let us also pray that men and women alike will come to see the beauty, mystery, and influence of woman as God created her to be; that her supernatural mission to bring forth and nurture life will be seen as a sacred calling and held in reverence; that God's glorious plan for marriage and all that it symbolizes will be understood and hallowed; and that the fruit of woman's womb-a precious child with an immortal soul-will be loved and protected. What a joy and privilege it is to walk in radical, sacred femininity!

1 Frederica Mathewes-Green, "Twice Liberated: A Personal Journey Through Feminism" Touchstone Magazine (Summer, 1994).
2 As quoted by Alice von Hildebrand in The Privilege of Being a Woman (Ann Arbor, MI: Sapientia Press, 2002), 28.
3 Ibid, 28.
4 Christopher West, A Crash Course in the Theology of the Body tapes and study guide, 2nd edition (Carpentersville, IL:The GIFT Foundation, 2002), 6.
5 West, 5.
6 Christopher West, A Crash Course in the Theology of the Body, The Sacramentality of Marriage, Tape 8 (Carpentersville, IL: The GIFT Foundation, 2002).
7 West, as quoted in A Crash Course in the Theology of the Body,Study Guide, 51.
8 It is interesting to note that St. Paul placed the great call to arm for battle-Ephesians 6-following the powerful statements for the holiness of marriage in Ephesians 5. (I guess he knew it would be a fierce battle.)