Some thoughtful words for women by Edith Stein

The words of  Edith Stein (St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross) given below really touched my heart and helped me to look into my own life and make changes:

She says Sin can wrap the gifts that dispose a woman toward intimacy with God and others. Her heightened sensitivity can devolve into touchiness and sentimentality. Her knack for balancing diverse interests and duties can degenerate, Edith says, into a "perverted desire for totality and inclusiveness, a mania to know everything and thereby to skim the surface of everything and to plunge deeply into nothing."

This is woman's maternal gift gone awry, her natural assets twisted into liabilities. When this happens, the generous, selfless mother becomes the controlling matriarch with a martyr complex whom no one can please.  The affectionate wife becomes the resentful nag who cannot forgive her husband for failing to meet her every emotional need. In each case, a woman's longing for God's infinite love has been misdirected to human beings, with disastrous results. 

Edith suggest two remedies for a woman who finds herself falling into this trap.  The first is what she calls "thoroughly objective work," which consists of anything from sweeping the kitchen floor to balancing a budget or researching a term paper.  Such work forces a woman to submit to laws outside herself, helps her escape her obsessive focus on herself and her emotions, and encourages her to develop self control, an important discipline for the spiritual life.

The second remedy is even more crucial: Structuring one's days in a way that opens doors to God's grace.  Fidelity to Christ and to the demands of one's vocation requires "intense spiritual stamina," Edith notes, and that stamina "perishes in the longs run if not refreshed by the eternal wellspring" of grace.  She believes that a woman should tap into that wellspring through frequent sacramental confession, regular reception of Holy Communion. and quiet prayer throughout the day, preferably in the presence of the Eucharist.

Edith says " Genuine spiritual motherhood lies in leading others to freedom, not dependence; in giving, not getting.  But a woman cannot give what she does not first possess.  Only in union with God can she find the strength and selflessness she needs to be a true spiritual mother.  A woman's craving for God's love is not a weakness, Edith says.  It is her greatest strength: "The intrinsic value of woman consists essentially in exceptional receptivity for God's work in the soul."

Hope this helps you too!