[Footnote 81: Matthew xii. 49, 50.]
The Pope Saint Gregory the Great, explaining, in one of his homilies, this teaching of the Master, found some difficulty in his saying, "This is my mother." "We are without doubt his brothers and his sisters, by the accomplishment of the will of the Father; but how could any being other than Mary be called his mother?" And the great pope remarks, as soon as a soul by a word, by example, by a spiritual influence, whatsoever it may be, produces or develops in another soul the Word, the God, the Truth, substantial and living, justice and charity, in fact, Jesus Christ—for Jesus Christ is all these—she becomes in a way superior to the reality of maternal conception, the mother of Jesus in that soul, and the mother of that soul in Jesus.
Well, madam, if I mistake not, God reserves for you a part in his choice of this spiritual maternity. It is of those cherished ones of whom I cannot speak—respect and emotion forbid—but you will be their mother in Jesus, their mother in the integrity of their liberty as you have been his spouse in the plenitude of your own. Since there are other souls without number and without name, at least to our feeble minds, but who are counted and inscribed in the book of divine election, and who, by the mysterious power of your apostleship, shall be gathered from the four winds of heaven; for the Lord hath not spoken in vain: "And many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven." [Footnote 82] Yes, many, born like you in heresy without having been heretics, ignorant without being culpable, are hastening to the banquet of Catholic truth, to the joys of a refound unity; while, alas! some there are among us, zealous for the letter, but using it to smother the spirit, who will see themselves perhaps excluded from the kingdom of God, for which they do not bring forth fruit. [Footnote 83]
[Footnote 82: Matthew viii. 11.]
[Footnote 83: Matthew xxi. 43.]
Go, then, as a missionary of peace and of light to the land that awaits you, and of which by an especial design of Providence the moral future is almost entirely in the hands of women. You will not regret the public preaching which is forbidden your sex; you will speak in the modest and persuasive eloquence of conversation; you will speak by your person and your entire life, free yet submissive, humble yet proud, austere yet tolerant, carrying the love of God even to aspirations the most sublime, and the love of your fellow-beings to condescensions the most tender.
But I would define more clearly the special character of your apostolate. In recounting to me the history of your soul, with its loves and hates, you have said, "I have hated three things: slavery, the Catholic Church, and immorality." Of the three hates only one remains. Slavery is no more: God has effaced the sign of Cain from the brow of your people with a baptism of blood. As for the Catholic Church, when you came to know it your hate was turned to love, and you have espoused it to battle more efficiently with it against the last enemy; and it is in the firm foundation of her dogmas, replacing the slippery sand whereon your uncertain feet trod; it is in the fecundity of its sacraments, substituted for the sterility of your worship; it is under the guidance of its hierarchy, and in the force of its unity, that you will combat the double immorality which dishonors the Christian world—the immorality of mind, which we in Europe call Rationalism, which you in America call Infidelity; two wounds unlike I know, but two wounds equally mortal: and the immorality of the heart, that which corrupts the senses as the former does thought. These two immoralities are sisters; one attacks the virginity of faith, the other the virginity of love, and both have found in woman a special enemy. To the serpent which crawls on its belly and eats the dust of the earth, the Lord has said from the beginning, in pointing to woman, who is the ideal being springing from the heart of man: "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel." [Footnote 84]
[Footnote 84: Genesis iii. 15.]