The goal of religious education is to prepare young people for incorporation into the Mystical Body of Christ. Intimate communion of personal love and life with Christ means that all who cling to Christ also belong to one another, just as one member of our physical body forms a part of the others.
Filled with the spirit of supernatural maternity, woman has the mission to win others over as children of God. In a particular way, woman is a symbol of the Church, the Bride of Christ. Supernatural maternity impregnates only women who live and die with Christ, and who awaken through education the same purpose in those entrusted to them.
But the Mother of God is among all women the most intimately bound to Christ, she is the heart of the Church of which Christ is the head. Her singular support gladdens all women who want to be mothers in this supernatural sense.
For just as Mary begot total humanity in Christ through her offspring—“Be it done unto me according to Thy will” [Lk 1:38]—just so does she help those who strive to unveil Christ in the heart of another.
Thus, woman’s mission is to imitate Mary. She must further the life of faith by providing a secure and enduring foundation. As teacher, she must be the maternal, loving educator for Christ. She must nourish a rich life of faith in young persons through their intellectuality and voluntariness.
By so consecrating herself to supernatural maternity, the Catholic woman becomes an organ of the Church. And, in this way, she will fulfill this function in the religious life as in a life united to God in the world.
Saint Edith Stein
The Woman as Guide in the Church
Katholisches Sonntagsblatt für die Diözese Augsburg, 1932
Edmund C. Tarbell (American, 1862–1938)
Oil on canvas, 1892
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Stein, E 2017, Essays On Woman, The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Book 2, translated from the German by Oben, F, ICS Publications, Washington D.C.
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