“The gratitude we express to the Lord for the plan of the vocation and mission of women in the world is also a concrete and direct gratitude to women, to all women, for what they represent in the life of humanity.
Thanks to you, woman who is a mother, who will become a mother’s embrace for man with a uniquely joyful and painful experience; you will be the smile of God for the child coming into the world, you will guide his first steps, you will take care of him until he grows up, and you will be a point on his further life journey to which he can always return.
Thanks to you, woman who is a wife, who irrevocably links your destiny to that of a man, serving the community and life in the mutual gift of yourselves.
Thanks to you, woman, who is a daughter and a sister, who enriches the immediate family with your sensitivity, intuitive gifts, selflessness, and steadfastness, and thereby the entire life of society.
Thanks to you, working woman, who is present in all areas of social, economic, cultural, artistic and political life – for contributing in an indispensable way to the construction of a culture that connects reason and emotion, to an interpretation of life that is always susceptible to “mystery”, the more human to create economic and political structures.
Thanks to you, woman who is a nun, who, according to the example of the mother of Christ, the incarnate Word, the greatest of all women, you open yourself to divine love with indulgence and faithfulness,
thus helping the Church and all of humanity so that his life is a “signature” response to God, which expresses in a wonderful way the community he wants to realize with his creatures.
Thanks to you, woman, for being a woman! With your sensitivity rooted in your femininity, you enrich the understanding of the world and contribute to the full truth of human relationships.”
Source: Katolikus.hu – II. János Pál: Letter to women
Photo: Attila Lambert (archive, opening image), Zita Merényi
István Kuzmányi/Hungarian Courier
