HEADING VI
THE WOMAN'S VOCATION
Bougaud1 after having taken into consideration this power of woman, exclaims: Initium et finis mulier: in every great deed, you will find at the start and in the end a woman. And Tacitus:2 Inesse in eis quid divinum: woman bears in herself an imprint of God's power. How come this God, who does everything well, who rightly arranges things in weights and measures, all according to his most lofty purposes, is so liberal with woman? There's no doubt as to the answer: because he has destined her for a most noble vocation: the gifts given to woman are nothing but necessary means for her mission.
Let us go back to the origin of the world: there would appear the truth of this assertion. When God created man, so the Holy Scriptures say, he looked at him and, touched,3 with compassion in his heart at the sight of his solitude, God pronounced these words, among the most tender ever to come out of his lips: It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him.4 And he created woman in order to be of help to man. Help him in what? In his labors, in his
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anxieties: how bitter is pain when it is suffered alone! In joys, in dreams of happiness, little is enjoyed when one enjoys alone! And since man is not created for this earth, but for heaven, since God placed in him heavenly hopes, longings and sublime desires, since the world is an exile and heaven is homeland: to support man in this journey, to lead him to eternity, to go there with him, constitute the highest mission of woman: adiutorium simile sibi.5 Man, bowed to earth that he should till, would have often lost sight of heaven: and God gave him an angel, an apostle, an intimate, persuasive, loving friend who would keep up the light for him and the taste for heaven.
[Man's companion and inspirer]
Eve, it is true, took advantage of her sweet ascendance over Adam in order to pull him down in sin: but God, by punishing him, has not changed woman's mission: fallen man needed it even more. That woman, under the brutal dominion of paganism, through man's distrust, who fell into slavery, oppression or at least alienated by man, God thought of drawing her out of such a state: otherwise, she would not be ever able to exercise her mission. Mary was the highest model of the Christian woman: She accomplished her task of raising man, of detaching him from this earth, of leading him to heaven. Woman rehabilitated by Jesus Christ with patient work was rehabilitated to her primitive position. After nineteen centuries, the Christian woman
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enjoys again that holy and universal respect, that tender and religious love, those honors and those cares full of delicateness that make her mission possible. That certain spirit of chivalry which, in spite of natural exaggerations, dominated so much the Middle Age and today still forms as an enchantment and the perfume of civil society, is totally of one spirit and a fruit6 of the Christian doctrines on woman. Again we find in her that purity, that halo of modesty, that serious beauty, that amiable freedom, that generous virtue and that intense desire to attract man's heart in order to raise it to heaven and there bring him with her.
How many men, especially in today's murkiness of life, would have perhaps forgotten God, the soul, eternity, if they did not have a sister, a wife, a mother, a daughter! These are mysteries that will be revealed only in eternity!
Man, better equipped with gifts and schooling, amidst business and occupations regarding the present and what is passing, easily forgets the idea of the future: the invisible suffocates him, his gaze goes downwards. This is a fact that so many find difficult to explain today and which, meanwhile, places man in a status of inferiority with respect to woman: while he should be ahead of her by virtue of his intelligence. What man forgets is precisely how much the woman more easily
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remembers, because she feels it ever alive. She does not care so much about logic, but if something has to do with spiritual matters, she has a better intuition of it, enjoys it better, and more easily she tends to it. Someone has said: religion is for women. It is not for women in the sense of excluding men; but it is for women in the sense that women are naturally more religious. Also the Church, the Pope told Catholic women, renders you this honor by calling you the devote gender. And you must, with religion and for religion, be of help to man.
He who excludes woman from such a mission, displaces her from her vocation: he misplaces her. Women who do not do this are useless, if not harmful, in the world. A woman who turns proud or complains of having to work for the conversion of her husband could be told this: you are not doing your duty.
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1 Louis-Victor-Émile Bougaud was born in Dijon (France), on 26 February 1824. Having entered the seminary of Autun and then at St-Sulpice, he was ordained priest in 1846 in Paris. He was a professor of dogmatic theology and of religious history in the major seminary of Dijon and was the chaplain of the Visitation Sisters, always in Dijon in the years 1852-1861. He died on 7 November 1888. As a writer, Bougaud was resolved to lead society to Christ. As an apologist, he emphasized the correspondence of Christianity to the needs and the aspirations of individuals, of families and of the society of his time.
2 Publius Caius Cornelius Tacitus (ca. 54-120), perhaps he came from Interamna, today's Terni, in Umbria. He is considered the major Latin historian of the silver age, having lived during the time of the Flavius and of Trajan, a Roman emperor (97 A.D.).
3 Original in DA: tocco instead of toccato, colpito = touched, hit.
4 Cf. Gn 2:18.
5 Cf. Gn 2:18: “A suitable partner for him”.
6 Italian original: portato = prodotto, frutto.