March 8, 2022, International Women's Day
Every year this celebration makes us reflect on the “need” for a day to remember, celebrate, and honor women... We do not want to delve into the historical issues of “emancipation” that led to this day, but simply offer a few reflections. We want to try.
Edith Stein, a unique woman who shaped the history of twentieth-century thought, is certain that women can commit themselves to and fulfill themselves in professional life, making choices other than those that confine them to the domestic sphere. But whatever their choices may be, in each of them women express themselves—that is, they express their maternal identity. An identity capable of taking a comprehensive view of reality, an ability to bring together different elements, an immediate empathy toward anyone they meet.
And then, “at the center of human history (...) stands that Woman in whom motherhood reached its supreme exaltation and, at the same time, understood as bodily motherhood, its transcendence. (...) In order to become incarnate, God chose to be born of a human mother and in her placed before our eyes the perfect image of the mother” (Edith Stein).
Pope Francis echoes this: “In God, our humanity will remain forever, and Mary will forever be the Mother of God. She is woman and mother; this is what is essential. From her, a woman, salvation arose, and therefore there is no salvation without woman.”
Then who, if not God himself, has placed women in “their” place: at the center of history?
A “center” that time has taken away from them but that women live every day when they love, welcome, teach, organize, support, safeguard, protect, understand, fight, hope...
What women ask for, both outside and inside the Church, is for their voices to be heard and for their areas of responsibility to be recognized. Of course, each year we realize that there is still a long way to go, but women must not forget that they remain the “center” of history and that they have on their side the One who carried the God made man in her womb, the most important Apostle... of any apostle...
