A woman in the community of Marungu in the Taita Hills near Voi, Kenya (Photo by Jerry Fleury)
As we celebrate this month of Mary (and Mother’s Day within that), I am reminded that women comprise nearly 70 percent of the world’s poorest people and frequently bear the heaviest burdens. It is also the courage and resilience of women that often keep families and communities intact through challenges of poverty, natural disaster and conflict.
Throughout time, women have pointed to a world in which values are shaken up and the way of life overturned by a desire to birth a different world.
‘Madonna and Child’ by Kelly Latimore Icons (based on the Madonna Scroll)
Mary’s “Yes!” to her unique invitation to love — her faith and selfless participation in God’s mission — points to the way of discipleship, helping us to see that we too can be “Christ-bearers.”
The women who first witnessed and chose to share the good news of the resurrection teach us to shout the truth of love and mercy.
Women of history and around our world today offer unique insights, experiences and responses that break through the invisibility of poverty, brokenness, inequality and despair, and teach us to stand for justice and in solidarity amidst such realities.
It seems these women know, as writer and poet Jan Richardson describes, “that some things are so outrageous that sometimes we have to talk about them as if they have already happened in order to believe they could ever come about. And so if we believe that God has brought justice to the world, we live that justice, and we share in making the world more just. If we believe that God has brought healing to the world, we live that healing, and we share in making the world more whole.”
In this month of Mary, let us fully live our “Yes!”
Like so many women who envision a more just and compassionate world, let us live God’s justice and God’s healing so that anyone we encounter may know the wholeness and abundance of life God desires for us.
Like so many extraordinary women around the world whose love speaks the Word of God and nurtures seeds of hope and new life in their families and communities, may we too give of ourselves to others through unrestrained love.
Ted Miles is the former executive director of Maryknoll Lay Missioners.
Thank you so much for this powerfully moving reflection, Ted. I noticed my breathing changing as I read it, and I experienced myself and my place in the world in a slightly new way.
Beth, Brasil ’84-87