Fr Wasswa
- May 15, 2023
- 5 min read

Mirror of Justice

Mirror of Justice: The Vocation of a Woman

This weekend we celebrate the gift of Mothers. We do so with profound gratitude and respect to all those heroic women who have lived out their vocation faithfully, and by so doing, they have made a huge contribution in the shaping of civilizations, societies, and families of people generations after generations. And we pray that God will continue to bless and strengthen them always. We are all here because a mother gave birth. HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!

The preservation and the flourishing of a culture of life rests on the restoration and the protection of the sanctity and dignity of a woman. At the heart of all great civilizations is the enduring love and unfailing courage of a woman. When a civilization loses respect and the proper placement of a woman’s dignity and value, it decays and erodes away from the face of the earth. A French novelist Leon Bloy once said, “The more a woman is holy, the more she becomes a woman.” This only means that the more a woman cooperates with God in bringing forth life and promoting life, the more she knows herself. A woman is the closest collaborator with God in matters of life. That is why there is a greater tenderness and a gentleness in a woman’s heart, so that life can grow. When a woman loses knowledge of herself and the dignity and the sanctity to which God calls her, it is the man who suffers the most. For, he not only loses a companion, also he loses a guide, “a helper” (Genesis 2:18), who was given to him as a light to self-knowledge. The man loses the “Mirror of Justice” through which he must render to God what is due to God. Thus, the book of Proverbs declares, “a competent wife who can find? She is far more precious than fine gold. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life” (Proverbs 31:10-12). I will attempt to demonstrate this in two ways: first, by looking at the ideal woman in the mind of God. And here we will use the example of Mary Mother of God. Second, looking at the woman as defined by worldly powers.

First, the ideal woman in the mind of God. The great archbishop Fulton J Sheen once wrote, “the hidden wish of every woman in history, the secret desire of every feminine heart, is fulfilled in that instant when Mary says: “Fiat” – “Be it done unto me according to thy word.” This implies that the ideal woman is called to be the bearer of life as it comes from God. This acceptance, this total submission: “Be it done unto me” is the essence of womanhood. A woman whose soul submits to the Divine Will of promoting life as it comes from God, whether physical or spiritual, paints a beautiful picture of a woman in her most sublime vocation. A woman is the ancilla Domini. The handmaid of the Lord. A woman is the bearer of the Mystery whose nature is love. And “love does not insist on its own way” (1Cor. 13:5) but it simply gives. This is what true freedom means. When Mary said, “Fiat”, God made His dwelling in her. A woman who says “Yes” to God makes God present in her. And the Presence of Divinity imposes a certain silence inside and out to allow for intimate conversations and revelation of God. This is why, I believe, a woman carrying a baby in her womb is drawn into greater silence, to allow for God to do his work. Even more so for a contemplative woman who receives the Word of God and seeks the silence of solitude to allow for the Word of God to grow and bear much fruit in her. The Woman, Mary, the bearer of God, descended on the slopes of a small village of Fatima, Portugal, on May 13th, 1917, to three young shepherds, Lucia, Jacinta, and Francesco. The Children were overshadowed by a powerful divine presence that rendered them silent for days. The same thing had happened to them a year prior when the Angel of God administered Holy Communion to the Children. “As the Angel held the Host over the Chalice, drops of Blood fell from the Host into the Chalice” Lucia wrote. Elsewhere she wrote “Every time we spoke of the Angel, I didn’t know what came over us.” And Jacinta used to say, “I do not know what happens to me, but I cannot speak, play or sing; I do not have the strength for the smallest thing.” In the presence of God, we can only adore in the silence.

Second, we look at the woman as defined by worldly powers. When the power of evil came to Eve in the garden of Eden, and made suggestions, Eve complied with those suggestions, and in so doing she changed her true nature from the bearer of Life to the bearer of death. And this is what she passed on, a rebellious and disobedient nature. Evil tried to redefine the woman and once Eve said “Yes” to the devil, everything changed. Today there are some worldly forces that are trying to redefine the nature of a woman, telling a woman to choose to kill her baby, turning women into agents of death instead of agents of life. That is not freedom!! It is slavery, and it is self-destruction.

The reason men today can be so confused and so disenchanted about marriage, is because the current portrait of a woman as painted by the world is not helping them in the way God intended a woman to help a man. It is critical that the contemporary woman recovers her true sense of dignity and sacredness and holiness, and let her sanctity shine brightly as light before the man so that the eyes of a man will be re-opened to see truth and beauty once again. When a woman turns against her own offspring, and refuses to be the sanctuary of life, the man is terribly shaken, because he sees his future and legacy in great danger. When a woman throws herself out for pleasures as if that is the only thing that defines her, the man loses respect for the woman and treats her like an object. After all, that is the only thing he sees.

A true and divinely appointed “helper” a woman is to a man. A true light and guide, a mirror of Justice, and a reflection of man himself. For when a man looks at the ideal woman, man comes to the knowledge of himself and of God.