My sincere thanks and appreciation to the women of RF (
and the wider world!) on this auspicious day
Miriam Therese Winter's "Valiant Women"
Look! We are all around you:
in the work rooms of industry,
and of every functioning enterprise,
unheralded, invisible,
some say nonexistent,
but we know otherwise.
Look! We are all around you:
contributing, setting standards,
changing the course of history,
preparing, supporting,
challenging those resentful of our collegial claims and capabilities.
Look! We are all around you:
Woman of courage, compassionate, patient.
Our number is legion, our gifts diverse,
our goal one and the same:
that history hear, that history is cognizant of,
that history will one day recall our names.
Who nudge us back on track;
Who remind us of the promises of Christ'
Who claim the Gospel for women, too;
Who preach the reality of wholeness;
Who strain against a patriarchal church
Who challenge us to grow!
Living God, Today we gather in and among Your Presence.
Valiant women throughout the world,
and all gathered here, raise our voices in global petition
for your promise of wholeness --fullness of life--
to be realized in all our world, in our nations and in our lives.
This we pray in Your Name. AMEN.
To be an Apostle is something great. But to be outstanding among the Apostles [as Paul says of Junia] - just think what a wonderful song of praise that is! They were outstanding on the basis of their works and virtous actions. Indeed, how great the wisdom of this woman must have been that she was deemed worthy of the title of Apostle...
[Mary] How is this? A woman again is honored and proclaimed victorious! Again are we men put to shame. Or rather, we are not put to shame only, but have even an honor conferred upon us. For an honor we have, in that there are such women among us, but we are put to shame, in that we men are left so far behind by them.
For the women of those days were more spirited than lions, sharing with the Apostles their labors for the Gospel's sake. In this way they went travelling with them, and also performed all other ministries.
CHURCH FATHERS: Letter 127 (Jerome)
The unbelieving reader may perhaps laugh at me for dwelling so long on the praises of mere women; yet if he will but remember how holy women followed our Lord and Saviour and ministered to Him of their substance, and how the three Marys stood before the cross and especially how Mary Magdalene — called "the Tower" from the earnestness and glow of her faith— was privileged to see the rising Christ first of all before the very apostles, he will convict himself of pride sooner than me of folly. For we judge of people's virtue not by their sex but by their character, and hold those to be worthy of the highest glory who have renounced both rank and wealth.
Abdu'l-Baha, Divine Philosophy, p. 50:
'Let us make a comparison with the days of Christ. He had eleven disciples only, for the twelfth was the cause of his crucifixion. The leader of the apostles was Peter and on the night of the crucifixion his faith was shaken and he thrice denied Christ, though afterwards he became firm.
'All were shaken but Mary Magdalene. She was a veritable lioness. She gathered the others together and said, "Why do ye mourn? Did not the Christ foretell his crucifixion? Arise, and be assured. They have killed but the body; the reality can never die, for it is supreme, eternal, the word of God, the son of God. Why, therefore, are ye agitated?" Thus this heroine became the cause of re-establishing the faith of the apostles.
'My hope is that each one of you may become as Mary Magdalen -- for this woman was superior to all the men of her time and her reality is ever shining from the horizon of Christ.'
