Writer's Wednesday -- Alice Von Hildebrand

Maternity

Whereas few men are called upon to become priests, all women, without exception, are called upon to be mothers. The saintly Cardinal Mindzenty has written a book about motherhood which--thanks to the inspiration and example given him by his holy mother--contains the most sublime reflections ever made about this topic. Indeed, "maternity is God's tenderness." Maternity is the great female charism which corresponds to the charism of priesthood granted to some men. God has decided that the two charism are not compatible.

In her book, The Eternal Woman, Gertrud von le Fort writes: "To be a mother, to feel maternally, means to turn especially to the helpless, to incline lovingly and helpfully to every small and weak thing upon the earth." The diabolical work that has taken place since the legalization of abortion is that it has destroyed, in those tragic women who have allowed their child to be murdered, their sense for the sacredness of maternity. Abortion not only murders the innocent; it spiritually murders women. Those who devote their loving attention to these victims of our decadent society know that the wound created in their souls is so deep that only God's grace can heal it. The very soul of the woman is meant to be maternal. Once this subline calling has been trampled upon, such women become "unsexed"; they are "sick unto death." Maternity is a sublime calling, and even though man's ungrateful heart often forget's his mother's sufferings to bring him into the world and her endless devotion in order to bring him up, it is well-known that when a man faces death on the battlefield, his last words, his last thoughts are often directed to his mother. Dying soldiers scream, "Mother."

---Alice von Hildebrand, PhD, The Privilege of Being a Woman.

[Photo credit.]