One of the first things we're taught is how to clean and care for and decorate our hair and body, and at first that's truly important and also fun, because we like what we see in the mirror and we like it when males are impressed by our appearance: it's a power trip of sorts. We learn - as the above photo testifies - that men are riveted by our legs revealed by short skirts and elevated by high-heeled boots. It's really funny that such a male-pleasing photo accompanies a quote about us loving ourselves FOR ourselves. Because, while for many women and men, face and body are the most important part of a woman, face and body are only a part of who a woman is. What about her mind? What about her soul?
I truly believe that if we, as women, don't delve beneath the surface of our bodily selves to discover our minds and souls, we can end up being no more than "man's rib." That image in Genesis, of woman being created from man's rib, has complex meaning. A woman, then, is flesh of man's flesh, dear to him as his own self - a beautiful thought. But the temptation is for men to think of women as objects, as their possessions because they are part of themselves. Thus men over the ages - including Kings and Saints - have taken it upon themselves to tell women who they are and what they're worth.
How can a woman truly love herself if someone else gives her her own identity? Yet countless teen girls and women have abdicated their responsibility to discover who they are by allowing men to rule their lives in abusive relationships. These women have been dependent on the males in their lives' strange sick concept of love to form their own idea that loving themselves means doing whatever their men want them to do.
The Book of Genesis teaches us women how to love ourselves - for women and men are made in the Image and Likeness of God and are equal before God. This means that women mirror and contain in their own spirits God's love, gentleness, and mercy, but also God's power and authority. All these manifestations of God's Presence in their souls are given them to build up the goodness of the world, in their own life journeys. In addition, women have their own personalities and gifts, and need time and space to discover them before they choose to marry, remain single, or enter religious life.
Strangely enough, before any rich privileged women spoke out this truth, a 17th century Mexican nun, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, the daughter of poor unwed parents - a Creole mother and a Spanish father - rebutted the speeches of the male saints who attempted to define women as inferior beings - and became known as the First Feminist of the New World. In the spirit of Genesis, she proclaims "I will own my very own soul as if it were not mine."
In an age when the vast majority of women were not considered capable or worthy of receiving an education, this self-taught recluse (who chose to live alone to have freedom to study) composed devotional verse, secular love poems, comedies, plays, theological essays, autobiographical treatises, and liturgical hymns. She's been called one of the major female poets of the Eastern hemisphere. She publicly stated in her writing "Like men, do women not have a rational soul? Why then shall they not enjoy the privilege of the enlightenment of letters? Is a woman's soul not as receptive to God's grace and glory as a man's?"
As a result of her open rejection of society's mores, Sor Juana was subjected to biting criticism from both peers and superiors in the Church. And four centuries later, sexism is still a brutal reality in both society and in the Church. In both spheres, part of a woman's work as a disciple of Christ today is to engage in the battle to own her own soul, to truly love herself as the person God has created her to be, and to speak out for women to be treated as beings equal to men in God's sight. Many times, this might lead to misunderstanding and persecution. But that is a prophet's lot.
Pope Francis has said "I think that we haven't yet come up with a deep theology of women in the Church....we need to create still broader opportunities for a more incisive female presence."
In "U.S. Catholic," Emily Reimer-Barry argues - and I agree with her - "A new theology of women cannot and should not be authored by men. Rather than a new theology of women written by men, it is time for women in the Church to have a voice in the construction of the Church's theology of women....We need a global consultation, led by female theologians and women religious, tasked with listening and learning from stories of everyday women and the social data that provide the context for those personal narratives."
One of those female theologians is Phyllis Zagano, who is a member of the Pope's new commission to study the question of female deacons. She has written "Holy Saturday: An Argument for the Restoration of the Female Diaconate in the Catholic Church." In an article in U.S. Catholic, she comments
"At Vatican II, at least two bishops suggested ordaining women as deacons. Others have joined the recommendation since then. The Church today teaches that it does not possess the authority to ordain women as priests (and by inference bishops), but it has made no contemporary determination regarding women as deacons. So the matter of women deacons remains an open question.
"Early Church Councils - Nicaea (325) and Chalcedon (451) - gave direction to the practice of ordaining women as deacons. Women were ordained in the West up until at least the 12th century and even later in the East. We have several liturgies for ordaining women as deacons and even an 11th century papal letter affirming a bishop's ability to do so.
"What the Church has done, the Church can do again....Ordaining women as deacons is the best way to address the key challenge facing the Church today: how to best announce the Good News that all are made in the Image and Likeness of God."
I must add here that for many years the National Association of Permanent Deacon Directors petitioned Rome to study the issue of women deacons because these married men recognized the gifts of women which would be better utilized by the Church through ordained service. As the wife of a Permanent Deacon, who has met many educated, qualified, and holy women, I second Phyllis Zagano's belief that women have the gifts, the courage, the desire, the call! to become ordained deacons.
Women, love yourselves as priceless beings created in the Image and Likeness of God. Love yourselves well enough to discover your own minds and souls. Love yourselves well enough to choose husbands who will love you as a full person of body, mind, and soul. Love yourselves and others with God's own tenderness, justice, and mercy. Speak with God's Voice of power and authority to denounce injustice, because women through the centuries have endured prejudice and understand that pain of being rejected. Women, pray and speak out so that our Churches whose task is to speak the Gospel, will listen to truth and begin to truly live the Gospel by affirming the gifts of the women who are half of their congregations.