In October of last year the Lord spoke two words to me which I have been pondering ever since. The words are radical femininity.
   Our society has been poisoned by radical feminists for over forty years. Feminists have been a strong force behind both the abortion movement and the homosexual agenda; they have championed the cause of "emancipating" women from the "drudgery" of homemaking and child rearing in order to be "fulfilled" in the work place; they have promoted day-care centers; they have pushed to redefine family to include unmarried heterosexual partnerships, serial partnerships, and homosexual partnerships; they have actively participated in revamping our educational system which now indoctrinates our nation's children with a revisionist account of history, with moral relativism, and with sexual immorality. Not only has this ungodly and abhorrent feminist position infiltrated our country, it has now been exported worldwide.
   Because the feminist movement is so radical, the call to true femininity based upon Judeo-Christian values must also be radical. It is high time for Christians who have slowly, perhaps unwittingly, been drawn into this modern cultural revolution to open our eyes, recognize the lies we have been fed, and take positive action. Since women have played such a prominent role in creating the problem which now exists, it is imperative that godly women play a major role in reversing these damaging trends. Remember our first mother, Eve, led our race into original sin, but it was through a young virgin, Mary, that God sent His Son into the world to redeem us.
   Radical femininity functions in an entirely different way from the feminism of our day. It does not parade itself across the evening news, scream obscenities, arm-twist politicians, or belittle womanhood and childbearing. Nor does it play the victim, push for "equal rights," or denigrade men.
   Certainly God created woman equal with man in many important ways: she is equal before God as a unique person; she is equal in dignity; she is created in God's image as is her male counterpart; she has equal access to spiritual life with God; she is equally able to hear God's voice and have a personal relationship with Him.
   But woman was also created different than man. In addition to the obvious biological differences, man and woman are different in every cell of their bodies! Man was given physical strength and endurance in order to carry out his God given role of protector and defender. He tends to be more single-focused, more rational and less intuitive than woman, more alert to danger and more adventuresome than his female counterpart. These gifts enable man to take initiative and to lead, which is his God-given role.
   Woman, on the other hand, was endowed with a beauty, softness, and gentleness not present in man. She tends to be more intuitive and more relational, and thereby is gifted to be a nurturer, a comforter, and a binder-up of wounds. She is multi-task oriented, an essential ingredient for motherhood and homemaking. The very nature of her physical body points to the fact that she is designed to be a "receiver" and a "responder." And, although feminists refuse to acknowledge this fact, woman has less physical strength and endurance than man. In this regard she is the weaker sex. However, weakness is not a flaw, an imperfection, or a trait to be looked down upon. Far from that, Scripture tells us that God's strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). Woman's weakness often enables her to more easily be dependent upon God than her male counterpart who tends to rely on his own strength and remain "in command" of all situations.
    Since we have been so warped by our disintegrating culture, we must pray that all secular and worldly thoughts be eliminated, and that we be given "supernatural lenses" to see true femininity as God created it to be. As we look deeper into the divine gift of femininity, I want to focus on five areas: the Privilege of Womanhood, the Mystery of Womanhood, the Supernatural Mission of Womanhood, the Power of Womanhood, and the Sacrament of Marriage. The first two will be addressed in this newsletter, the rest in the next issue.

   The Privilege of Womanhood. God has given woman a privileged role in both creation and redemption. It was Mary, a virgin teenager, to whom the angel Gabriel announced the coming of the Messiah, the Savior of the World. She received the word from the angel and totally surrendered herself as the Holy Spirit overshadowed her, and the Son of God was conceived and carried in her womb. No man was present for this most sublime announcement in history. Joseph was later told of Mary's miraculous conception in a dream. In creation, woman is given the incredible honor of having a womb and of symbolizing in her body the bringing forth of life. If she conceives a child she has the awesome privilege of being touched by God as He places an immortal soul within her womb at conception. She then has the joy of carrying this child for nine months, nourishing his little body with her own, and in the fullness of time, joining with the sufferings of Christ through the pangs of childbirth as she brings forth a child created in the image of God-there could be no greater gift to woman.
   The New Testament gives many accounts of the high value God places upon woman. Ponder the Visitation. Upon arriving at the home of her elderly cousin Elizabeth, who was three months from giving birth to John the Baptist, Mary greeted Elizabeth, and the soon-to- be-born prophet within her womb leaped for joy at the presence of the newly conceived Son of God, and both child and mother were immediately filled with the Holy Spirit. These two women were the only ones granted the privilege of understanding exactly what was going on.
   Consider the fact that aside from the disciple John, who ran from the Garden of Gethsemene but returned to the Lord's side at the Crucifixion, it was women who stood by Jesus and supported Him during His agonizing death. And it was to a woman, Mary Magdelene, that Jesus first appeared on the Day of His Resurrection.
   Jesus not only spoke to the woman at the well in Samaria, but He revealed His Messiahship to her. This was astonishing in itself because she was not only a Samaritan, looked down upon by the Jews, but she was a woman, and one living in sexual sin. Let us also recall Jesus' tenderness toward the woman caught in adultery. His words, "He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone" and "neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more" have spread the hope of forgiveness down through the ages.
    And let us never forget the high regard He had for the love and emotion lavishly poured out upon Him by both the woman who anointed His head at Bethany, and the one who washed His feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair at the home of a Pharisee. His mercy toward the "unclean" woman with the issue of blood, who risked grave punishment in order to touch the hem of her Savior's garment, is another example of our Lord's high esteem for womanhood. Jesus is truly woman's ally.
   So women, let us refuse the evil lies which denigrate woman. Let us not seek to become more like man, to strive to do the things man does, or to belittle our womanhood. Let us walk humbly and joyfully in the privileged position God has given us and radiate His love as we go about our daily tasks. This is radical femininity, and it is a sacred calling.

   The Mystery of Womanhood. There is a certain mysterious quality about woman. God created her to be intuitive, relational, and integrated in body and soul, and unless she has been wounded by life's circumstances, she tends to be very much in touch with her feelings. All of life is connected for her; outward events have inner meaning and therefore produce a variety of feelings sometimes difficult to interpret. Man-being created more rational, single-focused, and task-oriented-often becomes exasperated trying to understand her because she views life so differently!
   If we take a look at woman's physical body, we see perhaps her greatest mystery and can understand more of the supernatural mission which God has given her. The intimate organs of woman are not visible; they are hidden. "What is hidden usually refers to something mysterious, something that should be carefully protected from indiscreet looks. The very structure of [a woman's] body symbolizes a garden that should be carefully guarded, for the keys of the garden belong to God. It is His property in a special sense and is to be kept untouched"1 until He allows the bride to give those keys to her bridegroom, after their sacramental covenant of marriage.
   Song of Solomon 4:12 speaks beautifully of this: "A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed." It is significant that the bride is first seen by her bridegroom as "sister." This indicates that the husband loves his bride first and foremost as a unique person for her own sake. He grows in love with her interior personhood before daring to ask to be invited into the very depths of her body and soul, into her mystery in the marital embrace.
   John Paul II writes, "The metaphors . . . 'garden enclosed, fountain sealed' reveal [that the woman is] master of her own mystery."2 The woman holds the keys to her garden. The lover is to enter the woman's inner sanctuary only with the utmost care and with her express permission. He must not barge in, manipulate, or coerce the keys from her hand. Love never violates the one who is loved. That which violates is lust, which is the unholy counterfeit of love. The woman, on the other hand, must not give her keys to anyone except the husband God has given her, and then only after the nuptial vows have been made.
   To understand more clearly the woman's mysterious enclosed garden, we must look at the Incarnation, the greatest event in all of history. God became man and was hidden for nine months in the womb of the Virgin Mary. "She carried in the temple of her female organs the King of the Universe Whom the whole universe cannot contain,"3 and the event was cloaked in silence and veiled in mystery.
   Woman's intimate organs are not only "hidden;" they are also "veiled." Moses veiled his face after being in the presence of God. The glory of God shone upon his face and the Israelites could not stand to look upon it. In many churches, the tabernacle containing the consecrated Bread and Wine, the Body and Blood of our Lord, is also veiled to indicate its holiness, its sacredness. The woman's body is a tabernacle, prepared and ready, although silently hidden and veiled, to carry within it a new life stamped with God's image in which He silently places an immortal soul.
   It is for these reasons that a woman must not betray her mystery. She must be a guardian of purity, not staining her precious gift by flaunting her sexuality in the way she dresses, the way she carries herself, or by her thoughts, speech, or actions. Because woman has been entrusted with such a deep and profound mystery, and because her body and soul are so united, when she betrays her purity, she wounds herself very deeply. She also wounds the Church and society at large. By lacking understanding of this sacred mystery and by betraying her purity, woman can undermine society-and indeed has. This is why Satan attacks so severely in the area of a woman's sexuality.
   However, for each woman who has fallen into sexual impurity, or who has been injured sexually by others, let us remember the mercy and forgiveness of our God. Just as Jesus dealt honestly but gently with the woman caught in adultery, so does He desire to deal with each woman whose garden has been trampled by sexual sins. Jesus wants to lift you up; to destroy the weeds of guilt and shame, of self-condemnation and self-hatred, of anger, vindictiveness and of lust; and to heal the pain, the deep wounds that feel like they will never go away. He wants to bring you to the place of forgiving yourself and those who have caused you pain. When He is finished, He will ask you, as the tender of your garden, the guardian of your hidden and veiled holy tabernacle, to gently close and latch the door . . . and to hold on to those keys until He allows you to give them to your bridegroom under the sacred vows of sacramental marriage, or until you are united with Him in a sacred vow of celibacy, or until you are united with Him forever at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.
   Radical femininity recognizes our God-given femininity as sacred in that we were created in God's image; in the physical we were designed to receive the gift of life within our womb, to carry another immortal soul under our heart for nine months and to bring this new life into the world; in the spiritual we were designed to bring forth life in every area of our lives, to imprint all we do with our feminine nature, and to nurture the weak and helpless. Radical femininity means walking in this truth, regardless of past sins we have committed or abuses we have sustained; it means rising up in the forgiveness and mercy of God, and by His grace, walking forward in purity and righteousness.

Continued in Part 2 >

1 Alice von Hildebrand, The Privilege of Being a Woman (Ann Arbor, MI: Sapientia Press, 2002), 82.
2 Christopher West, A Crash Course in The Theology of the Body Study Guide (Carpentersville, IL: the GIFT Foundation, 2002), 61.
3 von Hildebrand, 65.