Pope canonizes Mother who gave her life for her unborn child

Date: 2004-05-16

St. Gianna Beretta Molla: "Messenger of Divine Love"

VATICAN CITY, MAY 16, 2004 (Zenit.org).- John Paul II presented the beauty of the family when canonizing an Italian doctor who accepted the risk of death rather than endanger her unborn child.

The Pope recalled Molla (1922-1962) as "a simple yet especially significant messenger of divine love" when he canonized her and five others today in St. Peter's Square.

"A few days before her marriage, in a letter to her future husband, she wrote: 'Love is the most beautiful sentiment that the Lord has put in the spirit of man,'" the Holy Father said in his homily. Present at the canonization were Molla's widowed husband and three children.

"Following the example of Christ, who 'having loved his own ... he loved them to the end,' this holy mother of a family was heroically faithful to the commitment she took on the day of her marriage," the Pope said.

"The supreme sacrifice that sealed her life testifies that only the one who has the courage to give himself totally to God and to brothers fulfills himself," he added.

He added: "May our age be able to discover, through the example of Gianna Beretta Molla, the pure, chaste and fruitful beauty of conjugal love, lived as a response to the divine call!"

Code: ZE04051610

Feminism and sexuality

Without any slideshows to create at this moment, I find myself surfing the web a little more often than is practical. Anyway, I have been following the March for Women's Lives that was held on April 25 in D.C. I really wanted to attend; but I may have not been up for the challenge. I don't know if I've got the self control of the witnesses who took the silent stand.
Visit Annie Banno's blog to get the idea. Find Tuesday April 27th.

With the links posted there, I found myself visiting lots of different sites and blogs with varying points of view--lots of pro-abort and feminist sites. The amount of contorted sexual expression is incredible. We can only pray and grieve for the loss of the true sexuality among us all.

Listening to Chris West's talk from Sunday of the conference- "Real Men in the Real World" hit the nail on the head-- all of the misplaced longing (and the sexual attention that goes with it) reflects a desire for the TRUE BRIDEGROOM.

John 7 There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." 8 For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. 9* The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. 10* Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." 11 The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?" 13 Jesus said to her, "Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, 14* but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." 15* The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw."

Jesus fill us!!

On the Dignity and Vocation of Women-_______ Pope John Paul II

On the Dignity and Vocation of Women
Pope John Paul II
MULIERIS DIGNITATEM
August 15, 1988
IX
Conclusion

"If You Knew the Gift of God"

31. "If you knew the gift of God"(Jn 4:10), Jesus says to the Samaritan woman during one of those remarkable conversations which allow his great esteem for the dignity of women and for the vocation which enables them to share in his messianic mission.

The present reflections, now at an end, have sought to recognize, within the "gift of God," what he, as Creator and Redeemer, entrusts to women, to every woman. In the Spirit of Christ, in fact, women can discover the entire meaning of their femininity and thus be disposed to making a "sincere gift of self" to others, thereby finding themselves.

During the Marian Year the Church desires to give thanks to the Most Holy Trinity for the "mystery of woman" and for every woman-for that which constitutes the eternal measure of her feminine dignity, for the "great works of God," which throughout human history have been accomplished in and through her. After all, was it not in and through her that the greatest event in human history-the incarnation of God himself-was accomplished?

Therefore the Church gives thanks for each and every woman: for mothers, for sisters, for wives; for women consecrated to God in virginity; for women dedicated to the many human beings who await the gratuitous love of another person; for women who watch over the human persons in the family, which is the fundamental sign of the human community; for women who work professionally, and who at times are burdened by a great social responsibility; for "perfect" women and for "weak" women-for all women as they have come forth from the heart of God in all the beauty and richness of their femininity; as they have been embraced by his eternal love; as, together with men, they are pilgrims on this earth, which is the temporal "homeland" of all people and is transformed sometimes into a "valley of tears"; as they assume, together with men, a common responsibility for the destiny of humanity according to daily necessities and according to that definitive destiny which the human family has in God himself, in the bosom of the ineffable Trinity.