For Women

April 16, 2020
Good morning!  Again, I greeted the morning with a sunrise on my drive to school...such a gift!

I have been pondering something a friend asked me when she was in a moment of struggle, feeling isolated, alone and frustrated.  As she shared her struggles and her frustration with not being able to get away, she mentioned how in the scriptures men are always getting to go to the mountains to commune with God. Yet in the scriptures we hardly ever hear of women going to the mountains. Women were too busy keeping life going; they couldn’t abandon babies, meals, homes, fires, gardens, and a thousand responsibilities to make the climb into the mountains!

"What about the women?!" my friend cried in desperation.

As modern women we can feel like we are never “free” enough from our responsibilities, never in a quiet enough, or holy enough spot to have the type of communion we want with God.

I believe that this why God comes to women. Men have to climb the mountain to meet God, but God comes to women wherever they are. He comes to women when they are doing their ordinary, everyday work.

He meets them at the wells where they draw water for their families, in their homes, in their kitchens, in their gardens. He comes to them as they sit beside sickbeds, as they give birth, care for the elderly, and perform necessary mourning and burial rites.

Even the women at the empty tomb, who were the first to witness Christ’s resurrection, were only there because they were doing the womanly chore of properly preparing Christ’s body for burial. In this seemingly mundane and ordinary task these women found themselves face to face with divinity.

So if you ever start to bemoan the fact that you don’t have as much time to spend in the mountains with God as you would like (I admit I have felt this as well), remember, God comes to women. He knows where we are and the burdens we carry. He sees us, and if we open our eyes and our hearts we will see Him, even in the most ordinary places and in the most ordinary things.

In a recent homily by Pope Francis he stated, "God always starts with the women. Always. They open the way. They do not doubt; they know. They have seen him, touched him.”

He starts with YOU...always.
It is a gift to be a woman!