As a result, there is an anti-Mary movement from Satan that embodies Eve’s vice of disobedience and everything against the feminine genius, such as caring for the vulnerable and compassion.
- The anti-Mary movement is an attack both on virginity & motherhood.
- What was “my life for yours” was turned on its head to “your life for mine.” This is the true source of what we now know as the “culture of death” that envelops us today. We now see regularly the use of embryonic stem cells and baby body parts (both harvested from aborted babies) as cogs in the supply chain to help the living. Life is changed, cheapened, and chopped up for personal gain, not personal giving.
- What is also interesting about our “culture of death” is that like Eve’s disobedience, it started with women. The Pill and abortion have largely been choices made by women, with men playing a secondary role. 145
Motherhood
- Motherhood has a unique quality of self-giving built into it. Motherhood has a crash course in growing in virtue embedded into it—if we are willing to be transformed—
- Women understand (either as biological or as spiritual mothers) that their life has the most meaning when they are living it for someone or something else. While this is not exclusive to women, it is deeply rooted in the female soul. This general attitude of “my life for yours” is what has animated civilizations from the beginning.
- This is the flow that mothers understand. They know they will never see the completion of their own work; a mother never sees the full growth of the seeds she plants, the characters she cultivates, or the souls she helps sanctify, but that doesn’t stop her from doing so. 145
- This natural flow, however, of one generation to the next not only stopped but started to flow backward in the 1960s. Instead of having children for the sake of those children and their future, children became all about the parents and something they had a right to, or something they had a right not to do—first through contraception and then abortion, which the US Supreme Court has told us is necessary because sometimes, contraception fails. Thus the natural flow of civilizations was upended, and this change in flow has had devastating cultural, moral, and psychological effects.
- What was “my life for yours” was turned on its head to “your life for mine.” This is the true source of what we now know as the “culture of death” that envelops us today. We now see regularly the use of embryonic stem cells and baby body parts (both harvested from aborted babies) as cogs in the supply chain to help the living. Life is changed, cheapened, and chopped up for personal gain, not personal giving.
- What is also interesting about our “culture of death” is that like Eve’s disobedience, it started with women. The Pill and abortion have largely been choices made by women, with men playing a secondary role. 145
- When the love of mothers is no longer understood, the infinite charity of God will be forgotten and no longer prized. This can be seen in the children today who have no notion of God yet grasp at any available straw to prove themselves lovable and good. And because they have no one to guide them, they are looking in all the wrong places, and their thirst is never quenched. 146
Motherhood also offers a profound example of the kind of sanctity needed today. Mothers are the cornerstones of culture. Living motherhood with quiet humility couldn’t be further from the current ethos, but like previous ages, what is so attacked is precisely the antidote that is needed. Satan has tempted women in every conceivable way to reject motherhood as a value. As a result, more than fifty-five million children in the United States alone have been destroyed through abortion, and millions of women suffer in silence because of their lost motherhood. In New York City alone, the statistics are staggering: for every 1,000 live births, there are 598 abortions. 148
By trying to see what is happening to our culture, we can see what Satan is trying to do and what he’s trying to destroy. He goes after the greatest good. Motherhood is one of the greatest goods of any society because of the transformation women can have in men and in raising children. If man is unable to find an earthly icon of femininity, then not only is it impossible to convey what a proper mother is, what she does, and how vital she is, but our links to the perfect maternity of Mary are severed, leaving humanity bereft of the concept of motherhood entirely. 148
Archbishop Fulton Sheen speaks of the unique role women have within civilization, and Mary is no different: “A mother is outside time. She dies, but she is still a mother. She is the image of the eternal in time, the shadow of the infinite on the finite. Centuries and civilizations dissolve, but the mother is the giver of life. Man works on his generation; a mother on the next. A man uses life; a mother renews it.” 174
Not only does a mother renew life by giving life to the next generation; she plants the seeds that flourish into culture. Archbishop Sheen adds, “Culture derives from woman—for had she not taught her children to talk, the great spiritual values of the world would not have passed from generation to generation. After nourishing the substance of the body to which she gave birth, she then nourishes the child with the substance of her mind. As guardian of the values of the spirit, as protectress of the mortality of the young, she preserves culture, which deals with purposes and ends, while man upholds civilization, which deals only with means.” 174
Mary prepares us for anything
- As our Mother, she will help prepare us to endure whatever might come our way. Not only will she not leave us orphans; she will help raise us to be spiritual adults. 170
- Mary, the secret gardener—or “the heavenly gardener,” as she was called by St. Thérèse of Lisieux—helps her children become better followers of her Son by facilitating the maturation of their souls. 170
- Spiritual maturity is also a crucial piece of a creative minority. If you don’t have individuals who know how to pray and truly connect with God, then you cannot have what Arnold Toynbee called “the mystic,” or those who pray and then return to the world with a plan of action and regeneration. 171
- Mary helps her children see the Cross in light of love—the way her Son did as a gift of self for others. 172
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