On the Dignity and Vocation of Women by Pope John Paul II

Who among them, however, could have imagined that the promised Messiah would be ‘the Son of the Most High’? On the basis of the Old Testament monotheistic faith such a thing was difficult to imagine. It even exceeds the expectations of all Israel, in particular the daughters of this Chosen People, who, on the basis of the promise, could hope that one of their number would become the mother of the Messiah. “Mary attains a union with God that exceeds all the expectations of the human spirit. “Do we not find in the Annunciation at Nazareth the beginning of that definitive answer by which God Himself attempts ‘to calm people’s hearts’?. A woman is to be found at the center of this salvific event (MD 2:3).” This self-revelation is salvific in character …. “The sending of this Son, one in substance with the Father, as a man ‘born of woman,’ constitutes the culminating and definitive point of God’s self-revelation to humanity. What does this event mean for human beings? The Saint, always sensitive to the searching of people of other religions, makes clear that the Incarnation of Jesus Christ is the response of God Himself to man’s searching. “Thus there begins the central event, the key event in the history of salvation: the Lord’s Paschal Mystery (MD 2:3).” This letter looks at both the exalted humanity that conceived the Son of God, and the Divinity that revealed Itself to man and woman “made in the image and likeness of God” as a unity of persons, the Blessed Trinity.Īs Saint John Paul writes in Chapter 2 of The Dignity of Women, it is Saint Paul who links the Mother of Christ with the Genesis 3:15 account of “the woman” who crushed the head of the serpent, now known as the Immaculate Conception, by his words in Galatians 4:4: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent His Son, born of a woman.” Relying mainly upon the Sacred Scriptures, the Saint explores the meaning of the Genesis account of the creation of man and woman “in the image and likeness of God.” Seeing the Incarnation of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, as the central event of human history, the Mother of God is properly understood as she who was elevated to supernatural life by her union with God in Jesus. The timeless words of the apostolic letter of Pope Saint John Paul II titled Mulieris Dignitatem, the Dignity and Vocation of Women, released on the Solemnity of the Assumption, August 15, in 1988, is well worth reflecting on during our times.

On the Dignity and Vocation of Women by Pope John Paul II