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The witness of the Beguines of Northeastern Europe is the wit­ness of a move­ment of women. In fact some scholars have called the growth of Beguine spirituality, which began in the 12th century and retains some vestiges to this day, “the first women’s movement.” Individual Beguines such as Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechtilde of Magdeburg and Marie D’Oignies gained promi­nence for their scholar­ship, spiritual leadership and ecstatic experiences of God. More striking perhaps is the fact that the Beguine movement provided a way for many European Chris­tian women, poor and wealthy alike, to re­spond to the signs of their times and to their own spiritual needs and calling. They did so in a way that both shaped and threatened the structures that governed women’s religious lives. It was a movement that reflected the growing need among lay people for lives of spiritual meaning and religious action, as well as self-determination. In its far-reaching in­fluence and its struggle can be seen the move­ment of God’s own Spirit.

Essay and Prayer by Barbara Ballenger

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Teresa embodies the passionate longing for fullness of life in God. She was a woman, dauntless in the pursuit of Truth, willing to
have her life turned upside-down by the God of her longing. She discovered a totally mutual God who taught her to see reality from a new perspective. As a result, she fired human souls to reach for God in new ways and five hundred years later, she continues to do so through her writing and counsel. Today, Teresa mentors and challenges us to live with depth, with passion, and with purpose so that every moment can be experienced in the center of the soul, God’s s own dwelling.

Essay by Martha Marie Campbell and Prayer by Laurel Jurecki

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This woman of the seventeenth century left the world a comprehensive library of plays, poetry, prose, works of art, ideas and accomplishments. She has been called “the first feminist of the Americas.” Her poem, Satira Filosofica,
(Philosophical Satire) is an excellent example of Sor Juana’s feminist views.

Essay and prayer by Sr. Alicia Alvarado, OP

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In four of the six New Testament references to them, Prisca is named before her husband Aquila, which is highly unusual. Since women were rarely named at all in ancient texts let alone named before their husbands, the only possible explanation is that Prisca was thought to be the more important of the two. Since she is identified as a tentmaker who worked manu­ally side by side with her husband (Acts 18:3), she does not meet secular criteria for prominence hav­ing neither greater social status nor independent wealth. The only remaining explanation is that she was considered more important because of her work in the Church. To quote Jerome Murphy O’Connor: “The public acknowledgement of Prisca’s promi­nent role in the church, implicit in the reversal of the secular form of naming the husband before his wife underlines how radically egalitarian the Pauline communities were.”

Essay and prayer by Christine Schenk, CSJ

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Feminist thinkers have long said that unconscious sexism in doctrinal development led to an over-idealization of the concept of woman in the abstract at the expense of dealing with flesh and blood women. Ann Carr believes that ”the theology of Mary and her image in the Church may ulti­mately tell us more about the Church than about Mary.” Thus it has been possible to glorify Mary as ever virgin/ ever-Mother and hold her up as an impossible feminine model, while at the same time ignoring the oppression of real women.

Essay and prayer by Christine Schenk, CSJ

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The significance of Julian’s struggle to reconcile the truth of her experience with official Church teaching ought not to be lost on contemporary women. Julian provides a courageous example of one who, based upon her own experience of God, dared to question Church teaching, out of a spirit of love and loyalty to that Church, in a day when such questioning could be construed as heresy punishable by death. In articulating her theology, she appropriates Church tradition selectively, emphasizing those points of doctrine compatible with her own religious experience. Her courage to do this did not stem from any pretense of greater learning on her own part, but from the fact that she trusted absolutely, after a good amount of questioning and discernment, in her revelations as indica­tive of God’s will for herself and the whole Church.

Essay and prayer by Joan M. Nuth, Ph.D.

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Sister, deacon, benefactor. Missionary, evangelist, fund-raiser. There can be no doubt about Phoebe’s leadership in the church. She provided generously for the needs of her community at Cenchreae. She used her personal and material resources to create space for the Body of Christ to meet, to be fed, and to grow.

Essay and Prayer by Claire Noonan

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One of the most precious documents of early Christian history is The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, an early third-century account of the martyrdom of two women and three men in the arena at Carthage in 203 CE. This document is invaluable because it contains the actual diary kept by Perpetua while she was imprisoned awaiting her death. Although it is framed by the comments of an editor, scholars universally accept the authenticity of Perpetua’s account as the earliest piece of writing by a known woman in Christian history. It grants a rare glimpse into what a woman thought about the meaning of the Christian faith, free from the gloss of male commentary.

Essay by Joan Nuth and Prayer by Christine Schenk, CSJ

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