Blessed James Alberione

Opera Omnia

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HEADING VII
THE MISSION OF WOMAN AND THE MISSION OF THE CLERGY MADE CONCORDANT

If this is the mission of women, it follows that priests and women meet in the same vocation, that they ought to work in the same field. In a disorderly manner, depending on tastes? Without anyone regulating and directing the work? No: the army of women must have its captain in the priest. The priest has been established by God to save souls: and he is answerable to it together with women. It is, however, the task of the priest to guide his army to victory: it is his task to patiently study the plan, to refrain the audacious and encourage the timid, it is for him to recall the deserters and to take to the ranks the deviated: to lead all of them in battle.

[Connection link]

Today the value of this principle as regards care for souls is universally recognized:1 it belongs to the priest, especially to the parish priest, the duty to avail with everyone in order to achieve his end: to save souls. He cannot set aside some of the means and some of his cooperators: choir, cultural circle, conferences, advice, sensitive ventures, etc.: curates, beneficiaries,
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members of Catholic associations, religious groups, etc.: and among all these means of salvation and among these cooperators, there is one most important, most capable, most effective: women. So, let him utilize this means. Let him lead women, let him avail with them on all occasions: it is understood - with prudence, as we shall see ahead.
In the physical order, man is incomplete without woman: if he has the strength, he lacks the grace possessed by woman: if he has the intelligence, woman has the heart: united together, these two beings complete each other. And they give origin to other human beings. Something like it is the priest's and the woman's mission: the priest teaches, communicates the charisms of grace, sanctifies the temple: but the woman extends this divine influence up to the walls of the home, woman brings man to the priest. The priest without the woman would lose three fourths of his influence on society, woman without him would lose everything. Just as between God and man there is the priest, so between the priest and man, there is the woman, the connecting link.

[Common vocation]

And here is the very strong bond that unites the priest and woman: the common vocation; and here is the obligation of the priest of a careful2 and prudent direction to woman in the choice of means: and here is the duty in the woman to be humbly docile to the advice of the priest.
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If there would still be some doubt rising in our minds, let us look at history: at the sides of great benefactors of humanity and of great saints of Christianity, you shall always find the sweet image of women and of saints, who as if complete their work. At the side of St. Benedict,3 the great patriarch of western monasticism, you see St. Scholastica4 his sister; at the side of St. Francis of Assisi,5 the saint so universally loved, there is St. Claire,6 his town mate; at the side of the Dominican fathers, there are the Dominican sisters;7 at the side of St. Francis of Sales, there is St. Jeanne Francis de Chantal;8 St. Vincent de Paul9 had done much more for the Church and for the souls with the establishment of the Sisters of Charity as well as with the foundation of the family of Religious men for the missions. The Venerable Cottolengo10 was highly assisted by Marianna Masi11 and the venerable Bon Bosco12 her own mother, Margherita Bosco.
This is the providential order of the world: it is not up to us to change it: if we go against it, we shall turn our noble ministry sterile: by adjusting to it, we shall work with less effort and come up with hundredfold results.

Conclusion. - A warning is a must, to avoid misunderstanding. From what I have said and am about to say, some might perhaps believe that I want to assert that women must not be engaged with other matters except that of cooperating with priests: or
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at least that when they do this, they do not attend to their mission. It is not precisely in this sense that I want to speak. Women has to give material help to man: and in doing this she sees what a vast field has been prepared for her to act on: but I do not intend to precisely deal with this matter, thus going out of my intended purpose. Women have to extend moral-religious assistance to man: and this can happen in two ways: either directly, so I would say, in the work and in the direction given her by the priest: or indirectly by entering only into the spirit of the priestly mission, which is part as well of the woman's mission. Also this is most appreciated: but it is especially of the first that I intend to speak; inasmuch as on the other matter there already is a big number of books, with others even egregiously.
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1 DA has ricominciato = restarted, instead of riconosciuto = recognized.

2 DA has occulto = occult, instead of oculato = careful.

3 Benedict (480-543/547) is the father of monasticism in the West. He was born in Norcia, in Umbria, to a Roman noble family. He founded 13 monasteries and created a monastic ideal with the Rule that Bossuet defined as “a summary of Christianity, a learned and mysterious compendium of the entire doctrine of the Gospel, of all the institutions of the holy Fathers, of all the counsels of perfection.” A lover of concreteness and clarity, Benedict gathered his thought and his action in the ora et labora, “pray and work” after which also Alberione drew much inspiration.

4 On the life of this sister of Benedict, the only historical source is chapters 33 and 34 of the second book of the Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great. Probably twins, Benedict and Scholastica were born and died in the same years (480-547). Scholastica consecrated herself to God as a young woman and followed her brother in Subiaco and in Montecassino. Their mortal remains rest together in the crypt of the great monastery of Montecassino.

5 Francis of Assisi 1182-1226) stripped himself of everything at age 24: clothes, wealth, ambition, pride, in order to marry “Lady Poverty” and to repropose to the world, in perfect joy, the evangelical ideal of humility, poverty, and chastity. His conformation with Christ also physically took place with the seal of the stigmata received at the mount of La Verna on 14 September 1224.

6 Claire (1193/1194-1253), born in Assisi to a wealthy family, with an unusual audacity, presented herself before Francis and his friars the night of 18 March 1212 in order to consecrate herself to God. Won over by the rule of absolute poverty, not only individual, but professed collectively, Claire extended to the female sex the spirituality of Francis.

7 Both of these take their names from Dominic of Guzman, born between 1170 and 1185 Calaruega, Burgos, Spain, and died in Bologna on 6 August 1221.

8 Regarding St. Francis of Sales and St. Jeanne F. de Chantal, see notes 26 and 27 in DA 47-48.

9 Vincent de Paul (1581-1660), after an experience of slavery in Tunis, decided, in 1617, to start the mission among the poorest farmers. On 23 August 1617, he started the Company of Charity (later called Ladies of Charity) by inviting noble women to serve the poor. From 1618 to 1621 he undertook with other zealous priests many missions in various dioceses of France. He founded the Congregation of the Mission, the Lazarist Fathers, for popular missions (1625).

10 Giuseppe Cottolengo was born in Bra, in the province of Cuneo in 1786. The eldest of twelve children, he finished excellently his studies, at first in Bra and then in Asti. In 1811, he was ordained priest and went as vice curate in Corneliano d'Alba. He used to celebrate mass at three in the morning so that the farmers could attend before they went to the farms. To complete his training, he obtained a doctorate in theology in Turin in 1816. On 17 January 1828, he began his great work of assistance to handicapped persons in the old Turin. From an old paralytic woman, the patients soon became 40. When the authorities ordered him to close the first house (which Pius IX had baptized “Casa del miracolo” [House of the miracle]) as a precaution against the cholera epidemic of 1831, he loaded his few possessions on a donkey and with two sisters went to the area of Valdocco, towards a farmhouse that had a billboard over its entrance, “Osteria del brentatore” [The wine bottler's tavern]. He turned the billboard over and wrote there “Piccola casa della divina Provvidenza” [Little House of the Divine Providence]. This was on 27 April 1832. Together with the widow Marianna Masi, about the year 1830, he founded the congregation of the Vincentian Sisters, later called Sisters of Cottolengo. The means sustaining the activity was exclusively the enlightened trust on Providence, coupled with constant prayer and charity. He died on 30 April 1842.

11 A young widow of great faith whom, on November 1830, Cottolengo designated as mother of his poor ones and of the rising institute of Sisters founded by him. (MM).

12 Giovanni Bosco was born in Becchi, Castelnuovo d'Asti, in Piedmont, on 16 August 1815 and died in Turin in 1888. Of humble origins, he lost his father early, and it was his mother who taught him the first elements of catechism. Giovanni was ordained priest in Turin in 1841. He immediately started taking care of the poor children and founded in Valdocco the first “oratory” (1842) wherein he gathered some twenty boys. In 1846, the young men were now 300. With the help of Fr. Rua and Fr. Cagliero, he established the foundation of the Society of St. Francis of Sales, whose first chapter was held in 1850. At the side of the Salesians, he founded (1872) the Salesian Sisters (Figlie di Maria Ausiliatrice = Daughters of Mary Help of Christians) and lastly the Pious union of Salesian cooperators.