"Oh - you're X's daughter. Or X's mother. Or X's wife."
In the parish where my husband is assigned Permanent Deacon, I'm most often identified as "This is our Deacon's wife."
True, the current major work role we have - which could include "student" or "nurse" or "bank teller" or "Pastoral Associate" - tells the world and us something about ourselves and the role expectations that we or others have of us. But no role that we have could ever completely identify who we are. Who we are may seem at first to be a constellation of roles, as many of us perhaps balance being wife, mother, and job holder. But even if we listed every "role" we have in our current life, put together they still would not describe the whole of each one of us. They don't include the unused talents we have, the unfulfilled dreams that we have.
Our souls are vast, mysterious oceans, our personalities largely undefined by us. There is always so much more to us that we can become! Which is why it's dangerous for us to over-identify with any one role, no matter how dear or life-defining it is for us. Our roles change during our lives; if we are wise, we change with them. Winston Churchill said "to improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often."
Yet, how do we choose what to change about ourselves? Whom do we choose to change into? Women face a dizzying number of choices and strong societal suggestions about what to concentrate on to become all that they can be. Even if we think about something as simple as choosing what clothes to buy, or make-up or jewelry to wear, society has opinions about what the latest fashions are or the proper colors for our skin tones, and society's ideas are always changing.
The ways women choose to live out their various roles also often follow pre-formed societal expectations. So-called "experts," or columnists in women's magazines, pontificate with their new and latest advice on child-rearing, interior decorating, sexual fulfillment, how to impress our bosses enough to break through the glass ceilings at our work places, and the latest diet to lose ten pounds. Because every one of us - unless blessed with a perfect metabolism - is always, always, always expected to lose some weight.
There's a profound difference between society's definition of beauty and God's definition of beauty. There's a profound difference between what society expects of us or gives us and what God expects of us and gives us. Fr. Richard Rohr comments:
"Most people in our whimsical culture live in a hall of mirrors, and so we find ourselves with fragile and rapidly changing identities, needing a lot of affirmation. We see this especially in so many young people. Their identities are built on feelings, moods, and ideas that are easily manipulated by everything around them, including advertising and its selling of superficial images." (in "The Naked Now.")
The paradox is that in order to make choices so that we will change well, we need to first know the deepest inner identity we have, the eternal part of us that never changes. We need to go to God in prayer. We need to leave society's hall of mirrors to stand before God's mirror and see ourselves honestly reflected back to us. We need to rest, relax, and be revivified by God's always loving perceptions of who we are. Fr. Rohr puts it this way:
"Finally, you allow yourself to stand before ONE mirror for your identity - you surrender to the naked now of true prayer and full presence. You become a Thou before the great I Am. Such ultimate mirroring gives you the courage to leave other mirrors behind you." (the "Naked Now.")
Jesus, who had dear women friends and women disciples who followed him, gave women the best advice possible when he said "Human approval means nothing to me. Why do you waste time looking to one another for approval when you have the approval that comes from the one God?" (John 5:41, 44.)
Do you know that God approves of you? You can't grow and change in the right directions unless you do.
St. Catherine of Siena (1347 - 1380) lived in an intensely patriarchal society that expected women to either get married or live in a nunnery. Instead she fought with her parents to resolutely remain a single laywoman, and traveled throughout Italy, caring for prisoners, the sick and the
dying (even plague victims), teaching, preaching, counseling, and even reprimanding the Pope.
Catherine did not buy into her society's common perceptions about women's identities and roles.
Catherine was not dependent on her identity of being someone's daughter.
Catherine rejected society's determination that her identity was to be someone's wife.
Catherine made her own way in deciding what she could do and where she could go as a free single woman.
All this happened because Catherine continually looked for her identity in God's mirror, God's knowledge of who she was and who she could become.
Catherine first discovered who she was in God's eyes by spending three years alone in her bedroom in prayer. Later, as she traveled, she carried God with her and within her in what she called her "inner cell in her soul." This ongoing experience of God's flaming heart of love within her taught her the new directions her life must take, and drew her outward to meet others with compassion.
Catherine spoke of our souls as a deep, full well within us. If we take time to be alone with God, speak to God, listen to God, we learn more about Who God is, who we are, and who we can become. We are led by the ongoing inspiration of God's Holy Spirit, which flows like living water from that deep well where He dwells within us!
Speaking of the deep well of our souls, Catherine said:
"So let us enter into the depths of that well, for if we dwell there, we will necessarily come to know both ourselves and God's goodness. In recognizing that we are nothing, we humble ourselves. And in humbling ourselves, we enter that flaming, consumed Heart, opened up like a window without shutters, never to be closed. As we focus there the eye of the free will God has given us, we see and know that His will has become nothing other than our sanctification."
St. Paul says "There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone." (1 Corinthians 12: 4-6.) When our focus is on our souls, we can see that God is at work in both men and women, producing all of His spiritual gifts in everyone.
Because Catherine focused on God, her spirit was not fixated on her outer beauty but instead focused on those spiritual gifts which have eternal worth. She didn't worry about what her society would think of her when she lived a very simple, very "different" life. She didn't let herself be held back by her society's - or even her Church's - common pre-formed ideas of who women were and what they could or could not accomplish. In a sense, Catherine moved "beyond" being a woman to simply "be" a human being in love with God and on fire with doing God's work in the part of the world where God had placed her. She thought of what God expected of her, not what human beings expected of her.
So, instead of focusing on that Disney Princess Snow White's magic mirror that answers the question of "who is the fairest of them all," let's focus on our truly Divine heritage of being a much-loved daughter of God. God is the only One Who can hold up a mirror to us which shows us our real, eternal significance. God is the only One Who can truly say to us "You are my beautiful, beloved daughter in whom I am well-pleased." And God's concept of beauty does not take into account wrinkles, sags, bags, gray hair, or extra poundage.
Who are we becoming? Who CAN we become? To change well happens when we are aware that God dwells in us, loving our inner, glorious spiritual beauty, and inspiring our growth. The outer roles in our lives, those outward parts of our identity, will always change. What matters is that they change in tune with our eternal, unchanging, inner spiritual identity, which is continually on fire with courageous and free acts of faith, hope, and love.