Deeply Love One Another

I've been wrestling a lot in prayer with attachments to others and with relationships. And I've discovered that when it comes to loving others, there are two extremes: to be too attached to people or to be too afraid to be attached to people.

For most of my life, I lived in the first extreme. I cared far too much about what others thought about me, and I placed too much emphasis on my relationships with others and not enough on my relationship with Christ. My relationships, instead of leading me into greater holiness, detracted from my relationship with Him because I gave them a higher place in my heart than Him. There was always a certain grasping in these relationships: it seemed that no matter how much love these people showed me, I was always hungering for more, grasping for things that I didn't think they were giving me, expecting more than was reasonable from them.

But now that I've progressed a bit in the spiritual life, I find myself falling into the second extreme. Every time I feel a deep love stir in my heart for another person, I live in a state of fear that I'm falling back into that first extreme. So instead of examining this love or allowing it to grow, I try to squash it or run from it.

There's this relationship in my life right now that is extremely important to me. This person is a spiritual mentor to me, and she's teaching me so much about what it means to be a holy woman of God. She’s become such a big part of my heart that I can’t imagine my life without her in it.

And honestly? That terrifies me. I live in a state of fear that I'm too attached to her, that my love for her is unhealthy, that our relationship gets in the way of my relationship with God.

When I begin to feel this deep love for her rise up in my soul, my first instinct is to run. Squash it. Root it up out of my heart and throw it far from me. Because obviously this deep and incomprehensible love that I have for her isn't from God--it must be from my own grasping, my own brokenness, my own need that I'm grasping for her to fill.

False.

In prayer, the Lord has been opening my heart more and more to the truth that He wants me to be in this relationship. He wants me to have this deep love for her. He wants to use her love to change me. He wants to use my love for her to soften both of our hearts to His love for us. Through her spiritual motherhood, He wants to teach me more about what it means to be a daughter. And through my spiritual daughterhood, He wants to teach her more about what it means to be a mother.

“My children, I will be with you only a little while longer … I give you a new commandment: love one another.” -John 13:33-34.

This is our faith, sisters. It is Incarnational -- He could have saved us in any way, but He chose to come in the Incarnation -- to come as a human person that we could see and touch, to use a human body as the instrument of our redemption. And He chooses to come to us physically in the Eucharist, to give us His Body and Blood in order to continually sanctify us and draw us closer to Him. And just as He wants us to encounter His love in His real presence in the Eucharist, so He uses others to bring us to a deeper encounter with Him.

Faith is not a solitary journey. It's not meant to be. Our God is a communion of persons -- three Persons, one God. And just as the Trinity exists in community, so are we meant to exist in community. We can't go it alone. We need others: friends, spouses, spiritual mentors, teachers, siblings, parents. And when I live my life in fear of being too attached to others, when I try to squash the love that stirs deep down in my soul for others, I miss out on the way that He wants to move through those relationships to transform my life.

Ultimately He is the only one that can fulfill all those desires that we feel so deeply, but that doesn't mean that others aren’t part of His plan to do that. He works through others to fulfill those desires.

And this relationship in my life? The love that stirs so deeply in my heart, a love that seems to reach into the abyss of my soul, a love that scares me and yet brings me an incredible amount of peace and joy--this is His love. I’m not capable of loving that deeply and selflessly on my own. This love flows from my love for Him. Because I love Him with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind, I am free to truly love this beautiful and incredible spiritual mother of mine as myself. "Love of neighbor is inseparable from love for God" (CCC 1878).

And the love that this spiritual mother has for me flows from His love. When she loves me, she is truly and freely loving me, but only because it is His love being poured out into her soul. He could fulfill my desires in any way, but He chooses to do it in an incarnational way--to use her love to show me how deeply He wants to fulfill my desires. When I think of this deep love that I have for so many in my life, I’m reminded of the quote from Les Mis: “To love another person is to see the face of God.” Through my relationships, I see the love that God has for me.

Sisters, there is nothing wrong with desiring relationship. There is nothing wrong with desiring to be loved, affirmed, wanted, cherished by others. There's nothing wrong with being attached to others--as long as we're attached first and foremost to Him. When we set our sight on Christ and our focus on our relationship with Him, others are going to come into our lives. He's going to bring other people into our places of need, and He's going to use their love to change us and to show us His own love for us. And what a beautiful gift. What a blessing to know that we do not walk this journey alone, to know that a love that stirs so deeply in our souls is a participation in the love of Christ.

Be not afraid to love deeply, to seek relationship. Just remember that He loves us first and that He loves us most. When we allow this truth to be the penetrating force and guiding principle, we are truly free to love deeply and to love selflessly.

So here's to deeply loving others.

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Catie Destatte is a senior Theology and Catechetics major. She has a passion for writing, Mama Mary, ministry to women, and evangelization. Her life motto is Totus Tuus Maria, and she tries to live that out in her every moment. After graduation, Catie will be serving as a missionary on a college campus with St. Paul's Outreach. You can find out more about her here.

Seven Saints to Help You Through this Year of Mercy

As Uncle Jesse said, “Have Mercy!” 

With this Year of Mercy in full swing, here are some saints to befriend during this jubilee year.

7. St. Vladimir

Have you ever completed an examination of conscience with the Ten Commandments? Ever get to “Thou shall not kill," think to yourself, “Didn’t murder anyone this year!” and move on? For some of his life, St. Vladimir could not have said as much. Vlad the Bad was a 10^th century Russian ruler who killed a fair share of people. He converted after witnessing the successful spread of Christianity through the testimony of Christians.

6. St. Dismas

Known as the penitent thief, Dizzy experienced firsthand the mercy of Jesus as the two hung on crosses beside each other. Just read Luke 23:40-43--you’ll see what I mean.

5. and 4. Sts. Peter and Paul

This pair needed mercy like nobody’s business. Peter denied Christ three times; imagine how Petey felt when Jesus came back and told him to not be afraid. Paul persecuted Christians before experiencing a conversion and becoming the greatest missionary of all time. These two are perfect examples of how God not only forgives us, but also gives us the grace to become leaders of His Church.

3. St. Maria Goretti

God’s mercy can manifest itself in the relationships we have with one another. For example, when this saint was attacked and stabbed to death, she forgave her assailant. He eventually repented, converting to Catholicism. He was present at her canonization.

2. St. Augustine

St. Augustine’s pre-conversion life sounds like that of a typical rowdy high-schooler. Parties, drunkenness, and impurity enslaved him. Eventually, God’s mercy, the beauty of the Gospel, and the prayers of his mother, St. Monica, led Augustine to the Church. Today, he is renowned as one of the greatest minds in Catholic history.

1. St. Faustina

Divine. Mercy. If you are looking for a best friend for this Year of Mercy, Faustina is your homegirl. Her diary should be at the top of your reading list this year. Venerate the image of Jesus with red and white rays shining forth from his heart, pray a Divine Mercy Chaplet, read Faustina's diary, and you have yourself a solid holy hour.

“‘I am love and Mercy Itself.  There is no misery that could be a match for My mercy, neither will misery exhaust it, because as it is being granted – it increases.  The soul that trusts in My mercy is most fortunate, because I Myself take care of it.’” – The Diary of St. Faustina

Why I Don't Wear a Purity Ring (But, yes, you'll still see a band on my finger)

A household sister and friend of mine recently wrote a personal blog post about the problems with “Purity Culture”, specifically the “purity ring,” and I wholeheartedly agreed with every word of it. When discussing her post with another friend of mine I couldn’t help but notice the confused look on my friend’s face, even though she shared my mutual distaste for “purity culture.” When I asked her if she was confused by my position she said she was confused not with my negative opinion of purity rings but with the fact that I wear one despite my apparent distaste for them.

“What?” I said, “I don’t wear a purity ring…” but my eyes had already fallen on my left ring finger where the sterling silver ring bearing a heart and a cross that I had received for my Confirmation was positioned.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, “This isn’t a purity ring it’s just…well…actually I’m not quite sure what you would call it.”

I’d like to assure everyone reading this at this moment that I am not in fact crazy and I really don’t think I’m stupid. But believe me when I say that I never considered this ring to be a purity ring, despite the fact that in hindsight, it probably appears so to everyone I encounter.

The truth of the matter is that this ring of mine represents so much more to me than some trite pledge to remain chaste for my future spouse, but to explain all of that I am going to need to back up a bit and start from the beginning.

I’ve never really bought into the whole “purity culture” thing, even from the beginning. The first time I ever really considered the topics of sexuality and religion at the same time was in sixth grade. But unlike a lot of Christians out there my first intellectual consideration of “purity” wasn’t at some youth rally or church group that was telling me to “save myself” for marriage. I’m not going to lie, I was a pretty naïve little sixth grader so if someone had said this phrase to me I probably would have asked what exactly of myself I was supposed to be saving for my future husband (A lock of my hair? My baby teeth?). Fortunately, I had an amazing religion teacher in sixth grade who took it upon herself to write her own middle school curriculum based on the Theology of the Body that had been articulated by JPII (a revolutionary idea at the time because there weren’t really even curriculums out there for high schoolers yet).

But unlike a lot of theology teachers and youth group leaders who only dive into TOB to talk about sex (specifically how you shouldn’t be having it but should rather be “saving yourself for marriage”) I distinctly remember how my teacher chose to introduce our class to the subject. She wrote two questions on the board and had us consider the answers:

Who am I?

Why do I exist?

Good luck trying to find two other questions that are equally important and equally terrifying to a sixth grader.

After posing these questions and allowing us to share our responses, my teacher then began to gradually unfold over the next few weeks the profound truths that can be discovered in JPII’s Theology of the Body. It’s important to point out that the answers she gave to these questions focused on one important thing: Love.

We are created lovingly by Love for love. God is our Father and we are His children. The Love exchanged and shared within the Trinity is so good and life-giving that God desires to share it and let it overflow so He creates us out of love to share His Love with us. And within each human being he gives us the ability to love and to be loved.

I know, there’s a lot of love there, but the important things to take away from all of that are the answers to the questions my sixth grade teacher posed to us:

Who am I? I am “one who is loved and one who loves”

Why do I exist? I exist “to love and to be loved.”

Why am I sharing this? Quite simply, it’s to emphasize a point. In my experience I learned that the discussion about my human identity doesn’t begin with a discussion of my sexuality; it begins with a discussion about love.

The problem with most of the “purity culture” that we find in many Christian circles is that, while it may have good intentions, oftentimes it is no better than the secular world in where it places its emphasis: on sex. This ultimately comes across as a hollow and empty message because sex disconnected from our deeper identity of love is hollow and empty.

Because at their root, the virtues of purity, chastity, modesty, etc. have NEVER first-and-foremost been about sex. They have always been about the human identity which is wrapped up in love. But because part of my personhood (or identity) is embodied (i.e. I have a body), these virtues have repercussions for what I do with my body.

But Satan, along with much of the world, is really messed up because he twists my understanding of love and the body. If my identity is tied up with loving and being loved, Satan is going to do everything in his power to make me feel unlovable and incapable of giving love.

A moment of true, personal vulnerability here: I’ve always really struggled with both of these lies, but I’m going to especially focus on the first one in this blog post. Satan has done a pretty good job of convincing me my entire life that I must be unlovable because despite the fact that “on paper” I seem to have my life completely together, I’ve always had a hard time making friends. Going further and really solidifying this lie in my mind, Satan has never once failed to tell me that I’m clearly unlovable because no man has ever found me lovable enough to ask me out on a date.

Verily Magazine recently posted an article written by a man explaining why he doesn’t ask out the seemingly “perfect” girl that he knows. One of the reasons he gave in the article boiled down to attraction (perfect as she may seem, he just might not be attracted to her). It was a well-written article and the rational part of my brain appreciated the wisdom of his insights. But as soon as I read it I felt that familiar dark shadow creeping into my mind and whispering again and again, “Well there’s your answer: you’ve never been asked out by a man because no man has ever found you attractive.”

Now, I knew that this was a lie of Satan’s the moment I heard it, but that didn’t make it any easier to shake. Weeks and weeks that same lie spun around in my head, inflamed by the fact that every aunt, sibling, parent, hairdresser and optometrist I encountered over the Christmas break wanted to know if I had any romantic prospects looming on the horizon. To have to keep insisting that “No, I have nothing to report,” while deflecting comments like, “That can’t be true, a girl like you surely has admirers!” was a trial, to say the least.

But here is where we get back to my supposed “purity ring” because every time that the lie that I was unlovable popped into my head, I would glance down at the ring I wore on my left ring finger.

You know, I didn’t always wear it on my left hand. Until about a year ago I had always worn it on my right. I only changed it last spring after going to confession with a little Eastern European priest who was the spitting image of Padre Pio. He told me that at the heart of my spiritual battle was the struggle to remember and trust that Jesus loved me despite my imperfections. He told me to wear a piece of jewelry to remind me of that truth whenever I began to doubt it. I walked out of that confessional and slipped the ring from my right hand to my left and haven’t looked back since. Before that moment it had always been just a pretty piece of jewelry, but after that moment it became an important symbol of truth in my life.

You see, this ring for me is NOT a purity ring because I don’t wear it to remind myself that I’m waiting for the love of the perfect man. No, I use this ring as a constant reminder that the perfect Man already loves me.

Satan’s lie that I’m unlovable is just that, a LIE, because Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried for me. He descended into Hell for me. And on the third day he rose again from the dead for me. This isn’t some fairy tale or analogy that Christians made up to feel better about their lives. It happened, and I profess this truth every time I recite our Creed.

But because I’m not just a spiritual being it sometimes takes more than words to get this truth to sink into my thick skull. Remember, I’m an embodied creature and so sometimes it takes visible, material, embodied things to get through to me. That’s why Jesus gave us the Eucharist, as a physical reminder of His love for us. But because we can’t physically carry the Eucharist around with us all the time (darn!) we sometimes need even more material reminders of spiritual truths.

Think of scapulars, Marian consecration chains, saint medals, prayer cards, rosaries, crucifixes, and sacred art. These remind us of already existing realities. They aren’t just some visible way to show others about some resolution we hope to complete in the future. They’re not conditional like a purity ring is (if I remain chaste until marriage then I will be pure) but rather unconditional (Jesus can and has purified me despite my sins and the lives of Mary and the saints prove it). While purity rings focus on the past (what you have or have not done) and the future (what you can expect as a result) sacramentals show us all of time in one eternal moment (whatever you’ve done in the past or will do in the future, Jesus loves you then, now, and always and He gives you eternal life to live with Him in Heaven forever.) Sacramentals, like my ring in this instance, remind us of our profound dignity and worth because they remind us of the love God has for us right now.

Knowing then this profound dignity and worth that I possess, I am given confidence to demand that others treat me (which includes my body) accordingly. The virtues of purity, chastity, modesty, etc. are then the natural conclusion to the thesis of love. If I believe that I am loved freely, totally, faithfully, and fruitfully by God then I will seek to live out this perfect model of love (after all, God is love) in all my interactions with others. When I begin my self-understanding with the understanding that I am made to give and receive the perfect love that is modeled by Christ, I won’t want to settle for anything less.

Thus, purity, chastity, and modesty make sense and flow naturally from this true understanding of love. They are not some arbitrary dictum handed down by power-mongering old men in funny hats who think sex is bad and we need to “protect” people from its corruption and temptations. People who think this is the Catholic Church’s understanding of human sexuality have clearly never read a word of Pope St. John Paul II (or St. Edith Stein or St. Thomas Aquinas or St. John Chrysostom or anyone else for that matter).

We shouldn’t begin our discussions of the human person and their sexuality talking about sex or abstinence or modesty like the “Purity Culture” does. We shouldn’t do this because the Christian exhortation isn’t to go forth baptizing all people in the name of the purity ring, the pledge to “save ourselves,” or the slogan that “modest is hottest” (honestly, anyone who utters this phrase, let them be anathema!) The Christian exhortation is rather to go forth baptizing all people in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The Christian mission is Trinitarian, and what is the Blessed Trinity but a Communion of Love. Christians are not called to build up a “Purity Culture;” we are called to create a Civilization of Love.

Because ultimately people, they’ll know we are Christians by our Love, not our purity rings.

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Alyssa Snyder is a Junior studying Humanities and Catholic Culture, Theology, and Philosophy. She is a native of Texas where she lives with her family in a blue-roofed house on top of a hill. She is passionate about the Truth of the Lord's Incarnation and loves spending time discovering and discussing ways in which others have incarnated the Gospel in film, history, literature, politics, and art. Her favorite saints are St. Teresa of Avila and St. Catherine of Siena because they both personify St. John Paul II's "feminine genius" in her mind.

A Note to Single Catholic Women about the Tragedy of Our Generation

This blog post goes out to all those single Catholic women who are striving for sainthood, practicing chastity, reading Theology of the Body, and waiting for the right guy (or just any guy really) to come along and pursue your heart. Yes, you’re single, and yes, you’re a little bitter about it. You’ve definitely spent a conversation or two complaining to your closest female friends about how all the Catholic men must be blind because there’s no other explanation for why there are so many beautiful, funny, smart, and holy women that have never once been asked out by a man! And, I regret to admit, we tend to view this entire situation in which we find ourselves to be a tragedy.

But I read something this summer that challenged this perception I had of myself as some tragic heroine alone and suffering because the corrupt culture has made all the good men too cowardly to pursue women’s hearts. Gertrude von le Fort in her book “The Eternal Woman” says that, “Our period sees the unmarried woman…as something tragic” and I think that statement rings true with many unmarried Catholic women. But to give some context to what von le Fort is saying one has to realize that she is writing after World War I during which almost an entire generation of young men died in battle, leaving a large number of young women unable to get married, though they might have wanted to.

But von le Fort disagrees with the belief that this generation of unmarried women was something “tragic.” She says that “The one whom we negatively call the unmarried woman is in a positive sense the virgin.” Now, a statement like that needs a bit more explanation to pull out the full meaning of what she’s trying to say. She is saying, essentially, that when we refer to single women as “single” or “unmarried” we are defining them negatively by what they lack (i.e. a husband). A fuller understanding of who these women really are comes only when we define them positively not by what they lack but by what they have, and this is their virginity.

Now I recognize that in our culture today it seems problematic to claim that all unmarried women are virgins because not all unmarried women are virgins in a physical sense. But it’s important to remember how Sacred Scripture defines virginity. 1 Corinthians 7:34 says, “The virgin is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about worldly affairs.” The difference between a virgin and a married woman to St. Paul is not some physical condition but a spiritual one. The virgin is anxious about the affairs of the Lord in a way that a married woman is not.

What do we learn from this? Mainly that all single women are called to embrace their identity as virgins and this is possible even if they have already “lost their virginity” because of how the Lord defines virginity spiritually.

But back to Gertrude von le Fort. She claims that the unmarried woman is not tragic precisely because she is a virgin. So what’s the big deal about being a virgin? Well, von le Fort says, “From dogma, history, saga, and art, the idea of virginity emerges, not as a condition or a tragedy, but as a value and power.” Christianity proclaims the value of virginity by placing the title “Virgin” next to the title of “Mother” in Mary’s name. Mary’s perpetual virginity along with her being the Mother of God are both protected and cherished dogmas of our faith. But even pre-Christian people understood the inherent dignity and value of virgins by upholding virginal goddesses like Athena, Diana, or Minerva or saying that it was only a virgin (or her spilt blood) that could break curses and avert magical spells away from an entire people.

Unfortunately, we live in a world that has completely eliminated the profound reverence that once existed for the virgin. Now, to be a virgin is seen as a horrible condition that one must throw away at the soonest possible moment. In a culture that additionally has eliminated the reverence it once had for motherhood, women are the clear losers, for their inherent dignity is not recognized in either state of life.

While our faith has done a good job of exalting motherhood (as is should) in response to this culture of death, we can sometimes exalt being a wife and mother to the point that not being those things (i.e. being an unmarried woman) is somehow viewed as “tragic.” And thus, the phenomenon of a generation of single Catholic women that views their situation to be a tragic one.

But here’s the real truth: The tragedy of our age is not a generation of single Catholic women. In fact, virginity is the vocation of EVERY woman. This virginal vocation isn’t changed or negated when a woman gets married, but rather fulfilled. Likewise, if a woman enters religious life her virginal vocation becomes a consecrated one. But to think that you are somehow “vocation-less”, even temporarily, if you are not married or a consecrated religious is simply not true. We don’t just sit around and hope that one day God will hit us on the head with our vocation; we have a vocation (or call) right now, and as single women that vocation is a virginal one.

Gertrude von le Fort is adamant that virginity is not a temporary condition lacking fulfillment but is “complete” within itself. She says that “the Church affirms that the virgin is as one destined to be a bride, but she does not see her only at the side of a man.” Even though “expectant bride” is one aspect of virginity, it is not her full significance. More significantly the virgin, as she stands alone “like the solitary flower of the mountains, far up at the fringe of eternal snows, that has never been looked upon by the eye of man”, reveals the “ultimate value of the individual as such, a value not justified by mere human qualities.”

Von le fort continues, “The virgin proclaims that the creature has significance, but only as a glow from the eternal radiance of the Creator. [She] stands at the margin of the mysteries of all that is apparently wasted and unfulfilled…she stands at the brink of all that has seemingly failed. Her inviolability, which, if it be purity, always includes a depth of pain, denotes the sacrifice that is the price for the insight into the immortal value of the person. This explains why the liturgy always places the virgin beside the martyr, who bears witness to the absolute value of the soul.”

But here it is important to make a clear distinction: the virgin is exalted with the martyr because both proclaim the “ultimate value of the individual as such.”  But we must remember that martyrs are not tragic figures even though they suffer greatly. Likewise, the virgin is also not a tragic figure, though her very existence will always include the “depth of pain” von le Fort mentions. Thus, while the virgin herself may not be a tragic figure she stands on the “margins” and “brink” of tragedy. She witnesses the tragedy and suffers the depth of pain in her heart, but it is never her virginity that is tragic.

What, then, is the tragedy?

I believe that the true tragedy of our age is not a multitude of single Catholic women but rather a generation of spiritually dead "Catholic" men. 

Now, I am speaking in broad generalities here. It would be ignorant (and a bit bitter) to claim that there are no good young men striving for holiness that are willing to ask women out (even though it may sometimes feel this way!). But, on the whole, we are experiencing an age where men are leaving the Church in droves, and the vast majority of those that remain are only engaged minimally (for more information and statistics supporting these claims please check out The New EMANgelization website found here). Now, I don’t know about you, but these are not the types of men that the typical novena-saying, TOB-reading, and chastely-living woman typically finds attractive. Not to mention, this woman is typically not viewed as being very attractive (at least by a worldly standard) to the average minimally engaged “Catholic” man. And herein lies the tragedy.

After WWI the tragedy for Gertrude von le Fort was not that a generation of women would have to remain unmarried virgins; it was that a generation of men had perished on the field of battle. This was the true tragedy. 

Yes, as a single Catholic woman I often feel deep within my heart the loss of a generation of true men. But the question I must ask myself is "For whose sake am I feeling this loss? For my own or for these men?" 

Because in a tragedy, it is not those left standing onstage at the end of a play that are considered "tragic"; it is those who have perished during the play, either due to circumstance or their own misguided actions. Likewise, the tragic characters of our generation are the men, and as the survivors left standing we should be struck by how unnecessary and truly tragic their spiritual death has been. 

So I implore you, pray for this generation of men and offer up your sufferings for them. The Catholic Church has always taught that our prayers for the dead are efficacious. So too are our prayers for the "spiritually dead." 

And here's the other thing about being a Christian: tragic stories are always given "comedic" ends. In a plot twist that no one saw coming, a Man who had suffered a terrible death and lain in a tomb for three days burst forth to new life. Just as in comedy, the story ends with a joyful wedding and celebratory feast, with the Divine Bridegroom wedding his human Church and offering his own Flesh to be the food at the table. 

Just because there is a tragic generation of spiritually dead men doesn't mean that this is how the story ends. The dead can come back to life through the divine power, love, and mercy of God. 

Think of the example of Lazarus. Jesus raised this dead man back to life. But remind yourself why. It was because Martha ran eagerly out to Jesus to beg for his intervention. She knew that if anyone could raise Lazarus from the dead it was Christ, not herself. And yet, even though the power was from God, it was begged for by a human woman. And God heard the cry of the grieving woman, wept himself for the tragic loss she brought before Him, and answered her prayer. 

Ladies, this is what we are to do. I have heard St. Martha described as a patroness of Hope because of how she responded to the tragic death of Lazarus. Like her, we too are called to be women of Hope even when facing the tragedy of the spiritual death of our generation of men. You, as a woman, cannot save them; but God can, and he wants you to beg him to do so with sweat and tears and eager longings. 

God told St. Catherine of Siena that her tears and eager desire for the salvation of souls could bind Him like a chain. This is the power God gives us as women. Use it! The Enemy wants you to take the pain and loss you feel in your heart and wallow in your own self-pity, becoming consumed in a view of yourself as a tragic figure. Don't allow the Evil One to have this power over you! Rather, have pity on your brothers and bring the tragedy of their spiritual death before God with eager desires for their conversion and resurrection. God has promised to have mercy on the human race despite its sin and imperfection. Remind Him of his promise. Do you want to be women of strength and power? Embrace the strength and power God has given you! He has given us strength to suffer and power to petition Him. So accept your sufferings and lay them at his feet, petitioning Him for the salvation you wish your brothers to have. 

St. Catherine was the quintessential "single Catholic woman", unmarried yet not a religious. Did she wallow in self-pity at the "tragedy" of her virginity? No! She had souls to save, recognizing that the true tragedy of her age was a generation of spiritually dead priests, bishops, cardinals and popes. So she prayed, and fasted, and offered her sufferings to God for their sake. And you know what? He listened to her and answered her prayers. Men condemned to die for the grave crimes they had committed converted at the last hour and entered the Kingdom of Heaven because of her witness and prayer. Be that woman like St. Catherine. 

I said earlier that the blood of a virgin was believed by the pagans to be powerful enough to save an entire civilization. Likewise, the sufferings of the Catholic virgin also have the power to save her entire generation when she brings her petitions to the Lord and unites her sufferings with the sufferings of Christ on the cross. 

Having told you this I end with only one question: What are you waiting for?

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Alyssa is a Junior studying Humanities and Catholic Culture, Theology, and Philosophy. She is a native of Texas where she lives with her family in a blue-roofed house on top of a hill. She is passionate about the Truth of the Lord's Incarnation and loves spending time discovering and discussing ways in which others have incarnated the Gospel in film, history, literature, politics, and art. Her favorite saints are St. Teresa of Avila and St. Catherine of Siena because they both personify St. John Paul II's "feminine genius" in her mind.