The veneration of motherhood—whether spiritual or physical—is vital to the pro-life movement and to how our society thinks about mothers and motherhood.
Megan Madden—a Catholic mother and writer who has completed graduate courses in marriage and family—knows this well, and in her book Mary, Teach Me to Be Your Daughter: Finding Yourself in the Blessed Mother, she explains authentic femininity, virtuous womanhood, and how they relate to our Blessed Mother.
During graduate school, Madden read the works of many great Catholic writers—such as Edith Stein, Pope John Paul II, and Alice von Hildebrand—on femininity, womanhood, and marriage. She began to understand that “the ultimate end of femininity and womanhood is imitation of our mother Mary.”
She then asked herself how women of all ages and in all walks of life can practically imitate Mary. This led her to St. Louis de Montfort and his ten principal virtues on Our Lady—deep humility, lively faith, blind obedience, unceasing prayer, constant self-denial, surpassing purity, ardent love, heroic patience, angelic kindness, and heavenly wisdom.
After much reading and prayer, she knew she wanted to write a book about these virtues and the feminine genius. Mary, Teach Me to Be Your Daughter takes each of St. Louis de Montfort’s virtues and matches them with a quality of the feminine genius. Madden then examines Our Lady’s life and motherhood through this lens and finishes each chapter with meditative and practical components for how we can imitate Mary.
“All women are called to be mothers,” Madden writes, “be it spiritual or physical. It is intrinsically linked to the psychological makeup of the feminine existence to possess deep within the recesses of her heart a variety of maternal qualities: gentleness, kindness, compassion, wisdom, counsel, protectiveness, purity, and loveliness.”
What this motherhood looks like is different for all women. Maybe it’s in physically caring for their own children; maybe it’s as a nurse caring for the sick or elderly; maybe it’s as a nun caring for the spiritual welfare of those around her; maybe it’s as a teacher, an aunt, or a godmother, who cares for the young people entrusted to her; or maybe it’s the single woman who prays for abortion-minded moms in front of an abortion clinic. As women, we all have different ways we are called to live out motherhood. But there is one thing we can all have in common—the guidance of our spiritual mother.
Mary is relatable to everyone because she also experienced the ups and downs of life. She felt the joy of carrying a baby and the joy of a happy marriage. And she experienced the heartbreak of losing her husband and of watching her Son die a painful death on the cross. Yet she likely encountered the mundane as well—caring for and nursing a small child, taking care of her home, and making dinners. But through it all, she remained humble, meek, giving, loving, and—most of all—obedient to God. There is no better example of motherhood than Mary.
Her perfect motherhood is something we can look to as we work to build a culture of life. It can help us to live out a love for others—even those we don’t like or those we disagree with—with kindness and compassion. Mary’s virtues teach fortitude and love, as we learn to know when to speak and when to listen. They teach us understanding in our encounters with single moms or with a child who has become pregnant out of wedlock. They teach us to be open to life in our own marriages.
Living these virtues can be incredibly difficult in today’s society because femininity and motherhood are often looked upon with scorn. In fact, in many ways, we see that today’s society wants women to be more like men. It even wants women to deny those special traits that make women so unique—the ability to carry a child in her body, the ability to nurse, and the nurturing quality that is intrinsic in women. Madden addresses this, saying:
The first step to break woman down in this manner is to strip her of her natural instincts as mother; in taking down a mother, one certainly takes down the family. The strange thing about this mindset is that it demands that a woman reject her maternal qualities to achieve true freedom and happiness. This is where Our Lady steps in and paves the way for all women, showing the dignity and privilege of authentic femininity and virtuous womanhood.
This is why it is so vital to stand up against these new societal norms and speak about the beauty and wonder of the female body and about motherhood. These good and beautiful qualities are too frequently dismissed.
“Our Lord calls us to ‘be perfect’ (Matthew 5:48),” observes Madden, “but he does not turn his back on us once he has made this call. He has given us a perfect mother to reach down to us, her beloved children, and help us to rise, to climb, to cling to the cross, to receive the graces her son yearns to pour out on us.”
Madden encourages women to become closer to Mary by saying a daily rosary and meditating on her life and to truly embrace her as our spiritual mother. She reminds us that no one could love Mary more than her Son and that, when we love and honor Mary, we are actually honoring Jesus and imitating Him.
So as we work toward building a culture of life—a life where both motherhood and all children are respected and loved—let us look to our mother and her love for guidance. No matter what we go through in life, we can be assured that Mary understands. She is our spiritual mother, and her perfect love will teach us to love more perfectly.
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One may (or may not) wish to recollect, that women are first called to be good wives before answering the call to be mothers within the family.
Mary was clueless for 5 days when she lost track of her Savior. The temple where he was teaching was the last place she looked/
Your disdain for the mother of the Incarnate Word is decidedly unChristian. Strange that you fixate on Mary and say she was “clueless” when Luke refers to both Mary and Joseph, with Mary saying, “Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously.” And of course they found him in the last place they looked; it would have been silly to keep looking for him after finding him.
The irony of Fundamentalist anti-Marianism is that it is just as anti-Scriptural and arrogant as is most secular historical-critical “scholarship”.
Fundamentalist Brian is back. The comments are as disrespectful as ever.
Athanasius:
Who do you suppose is “accompanying” anti-Catholic brian in his journey of ongoing and unrepentant disrespect of the Catholic Church and its teachings by allowing him to spew his hateful heresy and other anti-Catholic claptrap in CWR comboxes?
Coming to a deeper understanding of anything always carries with it the risk of trying to force it into a preconceived mold. Both men and women have suffered from this throughout history, but probably women more than men. I think we need to face the reality that each person is created in the image of a mystery, the mystery of the Trinity. The essence of that mystery is life-giving love and before we can live that love we have to learn to receive it.
Before Mary was told that she would be the Mother of God, she was told that she had found favor with God. It was revealed to her that she was infinitely loved before she was called to reproduce that love in her own life and actions. We too easily tend to take this for granted and pass on too quickly to loving and giving life to others. Yet we cannot give what we do not know that we have received.
Marianism is Catholic teaching and is unChristian as well as unbiblical….nowhere in scripture can you find that the Creator ever gives or wants the His creatures to receive glory or attributes that only He possesses. Even Mary knew this from the time she was born.
“… .nowhere in scripture can you find that the Creator ever gives or wants the His creatures to receive glory or attributes that only He possesses.”
“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature.” (2 Pet 1:3-4, cf. 1 Pet 5:1)
That’s just a start. Try again.
Hey Brain,
Do you believe Scripture? How do you read Luke 1:28? The angel addresses Mary as being “kecharitomene” from the Greek verb “to give grace” (charitoo). The word is the past perfect tense. The use of this work indicates that Mary has been given grace prior to the angel’s addressing her so.
Catholics believe that only God may confer His life upon us humans. We call that share in His life ‘grace.’
We share in His glory because He grants us that share. We acknowledge that those who follow the will of God (as Mary has always done) are blessed by God’s grace. We honor such people. Do you? Why or why not?
Wishing the book good success – our times of the last and greatest battle against family and marriage , as foretold by the beloved son of The Mother – St.John Paul 11 whose Feast Day would have been today – a battle against the dragon that our Mother is well familiar with .
Theme of the image of God in us , how all that is of Ceaser is of God too how separating them is schizophrenia – good diagnosis and remedy for our times by Holy Father in the Angelus addr .
https://www.ncregister.com/cna/pope-francis-at-sunday-angelus-every-human-being-belongs-to-god
There is the rather mysterious mention by Holy Spirit through St.Peter , telling wives to have Sara as model in marriage relationship –
https://biblehub.com/1_peter/3-6.htm .
Would same be since the trials in the marriage of Abram and Sarai can be related to more easily – that started with the errant decision to go to Egypt… that brought on the need to make ongoing reparation as circumcision , till the coming of The Lord ..Hagar comes along ..again trials ..the years of her and Ishmael staying with the couple – for another ? 19 years …Would the ‘silence’ of St.Joseph in the Scripture be to also honor the silent and hidden sufferings of Abraham and Sara , to also silently marvel at his graces ,living a marriage in which the flesh and its passions washed away in the rivers of Holy Spirit Love that flooded the Holy Family .
May same flow into families in our times too , in our efforts to take in more of our God given image ,ever getting set free from the distortions of the ‘flesh ‘!
Blind obedience is a virtue?
Blind obedience gave us lockdowns, closed Churches, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, denied wedding Masses, closed nursing homes, denial of Last Rites, no funerals…
I could go on, but I think it is very clear that blind obedience is no virtue
The blind obedience referred to here is obedience to God’s will…
God wants us to blindly obey Him? Obey, yes (“If you love me, you will obey my commandments.”), but blindly? That doesn’t seem in keeping with Moses and Abraham arguing/bargaining with God, or Jacob wrestling with an angel (or God). Israel means “to struggle with God.”
Struggling with God or arguing with God is not the same as seeing clearly what He is calling us to do. Which is why St Paul writes that, “for we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7) and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb 11:1). The “blindness” is NOT the dismissal of logic or reason, or some sort of irrational leap, but a trust and confidence in God despite challenges, the unknown, and our inability to comprehend fully Who God is and what He asks of us.
I doubt St Louis wrote in 21st C American English and used the words “blind obedience.” Perhaps a different phrase would render a more accurate idea.