International Women’s Day
In honoring Mary as Mother of God and Mother of the Church, we uphold the dignity and honor of all women.
“The hour is coming, in fact has come, when the vocation of women is being acknowledged in its fullness, the hour in which women acquire in the world an influence, an effect and a power never hitherto achieved. That is why, at his moment when the human race is undergoing so deep a transformation, women imbued with a spirit of the Gospel can do so much to aid humanity in not falling.”
The Second Vatican Council’s Message to Women, December 8, 1965
Mary’s unique role as Mother of the Church provides profound lessons in how each of us can live our vocation, whether as a mother or father, a priest, deacon, vowed religious, virgin or single person.
Read St. Pope John Paul II’s apostolic letter, Mulieris Dignitatem (On the Vocation and Dignity of Women on the Occasion of the Marian Year) on the importance of each person discovering her or his vocation.
Every vocation has a profoundly personal and prophetic meaning. In “vocation” understood in this way, what is personally feminine reaches a new dimension: the dimension of the “mighty works of God,” of which the woman becomes the living subject and an irreplaceable witness.
Mulieris Dignitate, no. 16