the “right” way to become a saint

 

How many times do you see fights about Catholic womanhood on the internet? How many tweets and replies and heated stranger-v-stranger on someone else’s facebook post about the right way to be a Catholic woman and the only way to be a saint.

It kinda turns my stomach. Look, I get it. We all love a moral higher ground! We all want to feel fully vindicated in our choices to work from home, work outside the home, stop working, practice NFP for mental health reasons, welcome all the babies in all the years, pursue adoption, not pursue adoption and face all the questions about your married vocation+.

What gets lost in all that spluttering and finger pointing, to me, is the holy women in our faith tradition. The saints, venerables, servants of God who stepped up and lived out a life of heroic virtue, saying yes to God. Saying YES to loving, feeding, clothing, instructing, visiting, caring for their brothers and sisters in Christ. Their examples show point-blank that living out the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, that becoming a saint, doesn’t look the same for everybody.

So last year we started this project, Misericordia, another Blessed Conversations study.

Four women in different walks of life on the Blessed is She writing team agreed to write reflections: a mother of ten, a mother of two, a grandmother, a single woman. I dreamed and prayed about how it would read & flow before I wrote the introduction. Blessed is She’s director of ministry advancement, Beth Davis, worked her mad skills on the questions for reflection and discussion. I peppered in Scripture from the Old Testament, New Testament, and Gospels inside each of the reflections on the works of mercy.

For you, just for your personal growth and learning about 12 different holy women with different careers, vocations, physical abilities, backgrounds, languages, countries of origin. For your small group, to discuss how to live out the works of mercy, corporal and spiritual. For your community group, to actively grow in virtue through these instructions Our Lord gives us in the Gospel according to Saint Matthew!

I hope you like it. I’m thrilled that it’s finally available for physical copy (spiral bound hard cover) or digital download. I’m nervous that you won’t like it but then I remember that it’s not about me or us, but rather about how God moves in the most imperfect of people to help convey His messages.

Also, let’s just please stop fighting about the one-right-way to live our lives as Catholic women! If we spent all that energy actually doing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, man! We would really be God’s hands and feet. Remember that we are rarely called to be His mouth 😉