(In light of today’s traditional commemoration of Saint Joan of Arc, a strong, single woman who used her feminine genius much to the good, here is a reflection from contributor Alexa Bulman on the need for such ‘spiritual motherhood’ in today’s world).
Femininity has been a topic debated since Eve bit the apple. What are the gifts necessary to a woman, manifested in such a way that she not lose sight of her personhood as a daughter of God? I think what is missing in our discussion of femininity is what may be called the lost script of spiritual motherhood. ‘Spiritual motherhood’ is a term that can often be used as a consolation prize for women with no physical children. Or it’s used for Sisters and Nuns who take on a specific vocation as spiritual mothers. However, I think many women are not aware that we are all called to cultivate spiritual motherhood as women of God, whether we have biological children or not. St. Edith Stein, in her brilliant Essays on Women Volume II, says
Women naturally seek to embrace that which is living, personal and whole. To cherish, guard, protect, nourish and advance growth in her natural, maternal yearning. Lifeless matter, the fact, can hold primary interest for her only insofar as it serves the living and the personal, not ordinarily for its own sake. (Page 45)
Many women would rightly say, well this is just the gifts of being a biological mother, why are you advocating for spiritual motherhood? While these gifts are used for motherhood of one’ own children, however, such shouldn’t end there. Being spiritual mothers is how we live out Jesus’s call for us to evangelize, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). When we as women fail to cultivate our call to spiritual motherhood, we fail to proclaim the Gospel. As physical mothers, we are limited to the souls we can physically tend to, but as spiritual mothers, there is no one we cannot reach with our prayers and sacrifices.
Although biological motherhood is a wonderful blessing for a woman, and can shape us for our end of eternal life, we must beware that such does not consume us and close us off from the rest of humanity, crying out for the personal encounter of a mother’s love. Our primary identity derives from our first calling, which is to love and serve God. Many religions have the tendency to reduce a woman’s role to bearing children. Catholicism, however, views a woman as perfect in her dignity as a human being first and foremost. The Catholic Catechism is very clear in its definition of a human person as “(t)he only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake, and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God’s own life. It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity.” (CCC 356) As women, our first identity is our humanity and personhood, because this is our relationship with God. However, the Church also recognizes the gifts given to each sex to show different aspects of the image of God. The Church recognizes the intrinsic dimension of a woman to be a mother, but has the foresight to know it is not limited to being a biological mother.
Pope Saint John Paul II, in his Encyclical Mulieris Dignitatem is very clear when he says, “Motherhood is linked to the personal structure of the woman and to the personal dimension of the gift …motherhood has been introduced into the covenant that God made with humanity in Jesus Christ. Every time that motherhood is repeated in human history, it is always related to the Covenant, which God established with the human race through the motherhood of the Mother of God.” (68, and 71), Mary, the Mother of God, is our ultimate example of how we as women can and should live out our spiritual motherhood. Mother Mary is the woman who raised women’s maternal vocation to a new height. Mater Populi Fidelis defines Mary’s spiritual motherhood this way:
The Church is not only a point of reference for Mary’s spiritual motherhood, but it is precisely within the sacramental dimension of the Church that her motherhood always unfolds……The Church learns her own motherhood from Mary in welcoming the Word of God that evangelizes, converts, and proclaims Christ; in the gift of the sacramental life of Baptism and the Eucharist; and in the maternal education and formation that helps the children of God to be born and to grow…. As Mother, Mary waits for Christ to be begotten in us and does not take his place; the same is true for the Church. Thus, “thanks to the abundant graces streaming from the open side of Christ, in different ways the Church, the Virgin Mary and all believers become themselves streams of living water. In this way, Christ displays his glory in and through our littleness.
For women, the way that “Christ displays His glory in and through our littleness” is in the ability to be a mother. Whether that ability is actualized biologically or spiritually, the gifts of motherhood are imparted on every woman’s heart. St. Edith Stein, clarifies the gifts of women further when she says, “This distinctive feminine nature belongs essentially to the woman in any role she may play, single, married or religious and the education of women should be such that she should be prepared to take on any of these roles.” (p. 43) She goes on to say, “Because of the specifically feminine ethos, women can bring a maternal, maturing and personalizing quality to any profession they undertake.” (p. 50) Spiritual motherhood isn’t a consolation prize for the few; it is the gift and calling of every woman. Physical motherhood is a blessing for some women, but not all. Spiritual motherhood is put upon the heart of every woman, and it is the responsibility of every woman to develop this gift, whether she has physical children or not. Gertrud von le Fort in The Eternal Woman, says, “The professions of women will consequently not be a substitute for a failing motherhood, but rather the working out of the never-failing motherliness that is in every genuine woman.”( Page 87) As women, because of our great understanding of the human person and our intrinsic connection to creation, we have a great capacity to nurture and grow in intimacy with other people. We need to cultivate virtue to temper these gifts; otherwise, they can turn to vice, being obsessed or controlling of people, emotionally manipulative of others; becoming self-centred, trying to fill a misplaced and under-cultivated Divine intimacy with a career, or even with a husband or children, and becoming angry when these things or people don’t fulfill us. We can also become cynical and closed off to our maternal gifts if we lack an understanding of how to utilize these gifts.
How does the underdevelopment of spiritual motherhood play out in women, and what does the correct integration of spiritual motherhood and virtue look like in women? Well, we can see the pitfalls and successes of women in developing their spiritual motherhood in a few characters from literature. I think of Marilla Cuthbert in Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery as a great example of the closed-off woman who hasn’t had an outlet for her maternal gifts. When she adopts Anne Shirley, she becomes both a spiritual mother and a physical mother through adoption. When we are first introduced to Marilla, she is a severe, cynical woman who has remained a spinster, taking care of her brother. She once had a love, but they fought and never made up. These circumstances seem to have led Marilla to a life of severity and disconnection, apparently without much in the way of maternal instincts. However, the adoption of Anne is a rebirth for Marilla; she softens, her common sense is an anchor for the flighty, whimsical Anne, and her dry wit softens and adds levity to Anne’s theatrics. Marilla is given an outlet for her motherhood; we could argue she should have cultivated this gift in other ways herself, which is true. We see real growth in Marilla, although it takes her some time; she finally has an outlet for her maternal gifts.
The successful integration of motherhood lived out in community instead of given to physical children can be seen in Anne Eliot from Jane Austen’s Persuasion. She is an unmarried woman with no children of her own, but living out spiritual motherhood well. Anne Eliot is persuaded to reject her love for a poor sailor and so their relationship ends and with it her hope for a life as wife and mother. However, this heartbreak doesn’t stop her from using her maternal gifts. We meet her eight years after heartbreak, and we don’t meet a bitter woman, but rather a woman of great tenderness and depth. She takes care of her father, sisters, nephews, friends, and relatives. She also visits an old school chum in Bath who has fallen on hard times, even though her snobbish father is annoyed by it. She offers hope to a man whose fiancée died, sharing a little of her own courage and perseverance in the face of lost love. Although Anne is not supported in her life, she is resilient; she perseveres, she does not allow disappointments to make her cold or bitter. When Anne’s nephew is injured, it is she who stays with him instead of her sister, who is actually his mother and who instead goes out to a party. Anne is a woman who is always seeking the “living, to nature and protect” others, while also remaining firmly rooted in who she is. Unlike Marilla, Anne does not become cold-hearted or jaded by her lack of physical ways to show her motherhood; instead, she creates it with those around her. She cultivates community, she is welcoming to everyone she encounters, and this deep virtue and charity in the end reunites her with her long-lost love, Captain Wentworth.
Mrs. Bennet from Pride and Prejudice is an example of physical motherhood that is obsessive. Now she isn’t the fool that many wish to dismiss; she is, rather, trying very hard to take care of her five unmarried daughters, who will be left with no home or income after their father’s death. Her husband, Mr. Bennet fails in his role as father and makes Mrs. Bennet feel her role as physical mother as all-consuming, especially hard upon “her poor nerves.” Mrs. Bennet is not completely to blame for her obsession with her children and controlling ways. Had Mrs. Bennet developed a spiritual motherhood, she could have been more objective towards material things and more concerned about her individual children. Instead, she has one objective: to get her daughters married no matter the cost to their happiness or individual gifts. Unfortunately for Mrs. Bennet, we don’t really see a dramatic change in her character by the end of the book, she is very happy that three of her daughters get married even though one of them marries a very bad man. Unlike Marilla, Mrs. Bennent doesn’t curb her vices or grow in an objective spiritual outlook for others.
The opposite of Mrs. Bennet is Marmee from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. She is a physical mother who also has an absent husband, but not from his lack of virtue, but because he is at war. Similar to Mrs. Bennet, she has all daughters and little money. However, unlike Mrs. Bennet, she is not worried only about her daughter’s financial wealth but their character growth. In fact, when her daughter Meg asks her if she has plans for her daughters, Marmee replies,
Yes, my dear, I have a great many; all mothers do….I want my daughters to be beautiful, accomplished, and good, to be admired, loved and respected; to have a happy youth, to be well and wisely married, and to lead useful, pleasant lives, with as little care and sorrow to try them as God sees fit to send….I’d rather see you poor men’s wives, if you were happy, beloved, contented, than queens on thrones, without self-respect and peace. (Chapter 9)
Marmee doesn’t revolve her life around her children, although she loves them dearly; she is out helping the war effort, taking care of the poor, and becomes a mother to the lonely neighbour boy, Laurie. Her motherhood, unlike Mrs. Bennet’s, is for the salvation of souls, not for the comfort and compassion of herself.
Nora Helmner from Hendrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is the unfilled and selfish woman who has looked for her identity in others. Although in a loving marriage, as the play progresses, we find out her husband Torvaldit does not think of her as an equal, in personhood or dignity; rather, he views his wife as a possession. So at the end of the play Nora abandons her husband and children to go find herself as she says I was your little skylark, your doll, which you would in future treat with doubly gentle care, because it was so brittle and fragile. Torvald—it was then it dawned upon me that for eight years I had been living here with a strange man, and had borne him three children. Oh, I can’t bear to think of it! I could tear myself into little bits! (Act II) Now, although Trovaldit has treated his wife with a lack of dignity, he wants to help fix the relationship. Nora, however, thinks her identity is gone, with her realization that she has never been treated like an equal. It’s an age-old feminist ploy, however, it’s a bad one: Because it confirms the very lie it claims to be fighting, that women, in order to be equal, must change. This is incorrect, women don’t need to change, they are equal in their dignity as human beings. However, their sexuality does affect how they behave in relationships. Women do have higher tendency than men of making an identity out of a relationship because of their intrinsic role in the creation of humanity. Now, although we do find our identity in another, that other person, or persons is God in the Trinity. As John Paul II says, “Being a person in the image and likeness of God thus also involves existing in a relationship in relation to the other I.” (Mulieris Dignitatem 27). We see Nora thinking she needs to go find herself at the end of the play, however, there is nothing to find, merely virtues to cultivate.
Had Nora been rooted in her personhood and developed her spiritual motherhood, she wouldn’t be having this identity crisis, regardless of how her husband might misunderstand her personhood. St. Edith Stein says, Thus girls’ education should lead to the development and affirmation of their unique feminine nature. Relevant to this is her God-willed place by man’s side; she is not to be in his place, but also not in a degrading role unsuitable to the dignity of the person. (50-51) We can agree Nora was placed in a degrading role, not as a wife beside her husband, but as a pretty object within his home. However, although her husband has failed her, the person who has failed Nora the most, is herself. Her abandonment of her children and husband to seek her “self” is a journey that is impossible and will never find fulfillment. Because we never find ourselves in selfish ways but only in self-giving and in relation to our eternal source of dignity, which is God. As St. Edith Stein brilliantly said: Only by drawing from the eternal source of power can a woman perform the functions to which she is called by nature and destiny (55). We see Nora trying to grasp at purpose and self-realization when she finds that her identity of wife and mother has failed her, yet it’s not the titles that have failed her but her lack of virtue and self-development.
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is the dramatic contrast to Nora. Jane Eyre has been “othered” her whole life. She is continuously demeaned and treated inhumanely throughout most of the book. She also leaves the man she loves; however, unlike Nora, it’s not to find herself. She leaves the man she loves because she knows herself. When she finds out the man who has proposed to her, Mr. Rochester, has a secret wife, she leaves him. And although she has no money, no place to go, she refuses to degrade herself and him by living as his mistress. Right before Mr. Rochester declares his love for Jane, he was playing games with her, trying to find out if she loved him. She declares, Do you think I am an automaton? A machine without feelings?….Do you think because I am poor, obscure and plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you and as full a heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and great wealth, I would have made it as hard for you to leave me as it is now for me to leave you….I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you. (Chapter 23) Jane does not have an identity crisis, for she knows her intrinsic worth as a child of God and her feminine gifts. She clearly shows what the Catholic Catechism teaches about the human person, “Who is not just something but someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons.” (CCC 357) Jane, unlike Nora, does not need to go find herself or her worth in an identity or other person other than God. Jane rightly declares she is free because she knows her dignity comes from God, she is aware of her spiritual motherhood, but that doesn’t change her personhood; rather, it is just a way she expresses it.
I think we are feeling the great deficiency of spiritual motherhood in our society with the lack of community and care for the vulnerable and lonely. There seems to be a temptation to focus only on physical motherhood, which then alienates women who are not physical mothers and creates the idea that they don’t have the same gifts as physical mothers. But the truth is that all women are mothers, who have a great capacity for intimacy with people and God, and an indispensable role in the protection, connection and care of the most vulnerable of society, not just children, but the elderly, the disabled, the sick, and the forgotten.
As G.K. Chesterton says about woman in his book What’s Wrong With the World, “In every center of humanity there is one human being upon a larger plan; one who does not “give her best,” but gives her all.” Women’s role as spiritual mothers within society is vital because they love and understand people in their entirety. To paraphrase Fulton Sheen in his book The World’s First Love, it is a woman’s love and the way she forms bonds with people that protects and redirects society to the dignity of every person. Sheen says women (r)estore respect for the personality. Man generally speaks of things: woman general speaks of persons. Since man is made to control nature and to rule it, his principal concern is with something. Woman is closer to life, and its prolongation; her life centers more on the personality.” (134) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his book The Gulag Archipelago Volume 1 speaks about how women in a crisis are most prepared to hazard all, for women are used to sacrifice: Man is afraid of dying, Woman is afraid of not living (128). He says women “Are the ones who remembered that life is given us only once and that nothing is more precious to us than our own life.” (40)
Every woman should cultivate spiritual motherhood within herself, because this is the way she can proclaim the Gospel and bring souls to Christ, while also deepening her union and intimacy with God. Because women derive their strength from their understanding of the personal, of the importance of life, and the gift of total love to all they encounter.
