Theodore Robinson

FROM The Nature, Dignity and Mission of Woman by Fr. Karl Stehlin (Kolbe Publications, 2018):

“… One of the most beautiful and fortunate things a human being can experience is the assurance that he has a home, a place where he can rest and withdraw from the commotion of everyday cares and concerns and renew his strength and vitality. And that is the woman’s role. That is why God, as we have already observed, designed her to have the qualities of constancy, “inertia”, patience and endurance. Constant change is not in her nature. On the contrary, she likes to be at home, beside her own hearth. She is not simply a place of rest; she actively opposes the agitation and unrest of the world, takes it into herself, so to speak, and thus causes it to come to rest. So it often happens that a child comes back home excited, worn out, upset, trembling and heavy-hearted. The child throws its arms around the mother’s neck, perhaps has a good cry and commends itself to her care, and then after a few moments his heart is peaceful and calm again. How indescribably important the restful, imperturbable qualities of a wife are for the husband, too, in his struggle to make a living today. This composure that soothes and radiates peace, this poise when everyone else is losing his temper—that is the great mission of woman in our time, which she can accomplish, however, only if she draws strength from the source of all peace, when she herself comes to rest at the feet of Him who is everyone’s final home.

“So it is understandable that God tied woman by her very nature to the house. In many places and many countries the mother goes out only to church or to go shopping; otherwise she stays at home. 96 How often, then, the children feel the urge to go back to the house, to their mother who is waiting for them at home, where they can calm down again. The mother at home is the symbol of the strong woman, as described in powerful terms in Sacred Scripture (Proverbs 31).

“In our time, which has seen an almost complete loss of eternal and lasting values, it is the woman who because of her most authentic nature has the mission of maintaining those values and handing them on. She is the place of rest; she carries what is precious within herself and therefore cannot miss out on her vocation by running around, but instead is immobile. (Thus many pregnant women today are scarcely allowed to move for months on end so as not to lose their baby). The same is true of her spiritual constitution: A woman is in complete possession of her home; where she has come to be at home, she feels secure and wants to stay. She is suspicious of everything strange, different and new. That is why she senses much sooner than a man the danger and threat that is concealed in everything strange. The man, after all, is the discoverer; he enjoys anything new and often loses himself in it. The woman is instinctively on the defence against what is new and immediately asks about the why and wherefore. I am happy in my home, and so what good is something new to me? This is true at the highest level about the preservation of eternal values, about the transmission of eternal, divine life. Thus the woman has taken all these divine things in and treasured them in her heart. She has become convinced of God’s infinite love, the truth of His words, His devotion unto death on the cross, the graces and means of attaining holiness which Christ has given us in the Church.”

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