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The feast of our Lady coming in Advent affords us an opportunity to thing of the part womankind should play in the ever present drama of life. For Mary is the model of all Christian womanhood. Women are endowed by the Creator with fine sensibilities and a most noble love. They are meant to be the inspiration of men. If the ideal of womankind is high, if she is exalted in men's estimation, if she is loved for her virtue, then the opportunity for good that is afforded mankind is tremendously great.

Paganism degraded womanhood and robbed her of her native dignity with which the Creator had endowed her. Mary's advent into the world, bringing the Savior of mankind, changed all that. She is "our tainted nature's solitary boast." But alas, the new days of paganism are with us. This time again, the sad opportunity is afforded women to step down. A changing world in the guise of emancipation offers womankind an opportunity to lower her standards, to degrade her dignity, to debase her prerogatives for childbearing and motherhood.

The Church has through the centuries watched over and guided the noble prerogatives of woman kind, not because the Church bestowed these sacred rights, but because she preserves what has been restored through our Lady and the Redemption. When woman is an ideal, man is, strictly speaking, a builder of the spirit. He builds within himself the great edifice of a spiritual character where the Holy Spirit dwells as in a temple. When woman is an ideal, men build homes, and children are received as the hope of a better world. The boy is looked up to so that he will carry on and build again as did his father, and the girl is cherished as the sweet daughter and mirror of the wife whose inward beauty grows more graceful with the passing years.

But the new paganism is threatening again! It is, of course, always in the name of emancipation women are to be freed from the very duties that make them beautiful with a lasting beauty - motherhood and sharing in creation!

Women are meant to be builders, too, in the strictest sense of the term. They are the heart of the home. It is through then that men learn to live and to love great ideals and to build character. It is through the mother, definitely closer to the child than any other living human, that young habits and fine characters are formed. Women are the cornerstone of civilization in this respect. They are the hope of the world! "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world."

Anyone who calls himself a Christian and a follower of Christ must think often of the Mother of Our Blessed Savior who was closest to Him all through the years that led up to Calvary. Anyone who respects women must know that it was Mary's role in Christian history to plae women on the high pedestal they now enjoy. Anyone who has forebodings regarding the changes in our modern world will go to Mary and fervently pray that the rights, spiritual rights, of women be preserved, that they become modern Bethlehems in which Christ comes to dwell and not worldly inns that refuse children's birth.

None of us can live through a social revolution and come out of it unchanged ourselves. The world changing simply means that men and women of our day are changing. We must hold fast to Christian ideals, particularly the ideal of womankind as it come to us from our Savior and from His Blessed Mother. If we lose this ideal, if women degrade themselves, they are not meeting, as we would have them meet the challenge of a pagan world. They are succumbing! They are delivering themselves to the enemies of Christian civilization. They are undoing the work of Redemption. They are despising our Lady. That is unthinkable! Women are the builders of a more secure world, where men may live as brothers because they have a common Father and a Blessed Mother.

Prayer: Our Lady of the hills and the valleys, look down from your throne in heaven an intercede with God in our behalf. As we live in a vale of tears preparing for the day when we may ascend the hill of heaven, pray for us, O Mary, that we may be worthy of the promises of Christ.

Intercede with God, that we may in imitation of you, follow Jesus along the way, though it be sorrowful - via dolorosa - out to the clear blue of the day, all the way up the hill, like you, to Calvary We are sinners, like Magdalene. Accept us into your company. Few of us are like John, the beloved disciple. None of us is like you. Teach us to love Calvary and to see the sweet wood of the cross upon which hangs the Redeemer and our hope for eternal life.

Source: Spiritual Steps to Christmas by Very Rev. Msgr. Aloysius Coogan 1953

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One of the great tragedies of life is finding one upon whom so much love and kindness has been bestowed, totally unconscious of the gifts that have been so abundantly bestowed upon him. Sometimes it happens that a wife is untrue to her husband. She may even be the mother of children, in which case we should expect to find an increase of that love which is so characteristic of womankind, and yet, somehow, the true stream of human affection has become poisoned and love is unrequited. Passion sometimes takes the place of true love, and where affection should abound hatred and disappointment take its place.

The dictum, corruptio optimi pessima - "The corruption of the best is the worst," typifies what we mean. The greatest harm is often done not by those who have no knowledge of the faith, but by those who once were infused with divine goodness and love and then permitted their illumined minds and inspired wills to become perverted and corrupted.

When those who once loved each other in marriage and were two in one flesh decide to separate, the human race loses a partnership and receives a blow that strikes at the very cornerstone of the social structure. When husband and wife decide that love has now ceased to hold any attraction, not only do they personally suffer a loss, but through them and the solidarity of the human race all mankind suffers.

Unrequited love is the tragedy of our day. Passion is mistaken for affection and love is confused with lust and sin as though love consisted only of sensual satisfaction and concupiscence. The Church, wise with the wisdom of the ages, stands as the beacon light in the tempest that surrounds the shipwrecked folly of our age. The Church proclaims the blessedness of marital union, and while she is thoroughly conscious of the powerful instincts found in every man and woman and entrusted by almighty God for the propagation of the race and for the allaying of concupiscence, wise Mother that she is, she emphasizes the tender affections of the human heart that can be nurtured only on the finer things of the spirit.

Those who have experienced the conflicts that arise between spouses and who have spent long hours in listening to marital difficulties and in giving advice, tell us that most of the pain that is caused and most of the rifts that occur are occasioned by little things, such as the tone of voice, attitudes, the irate response, the lack of attention, and the many little irritants of daily living.

It is a common fault of human nature, and one of which many of us are frequently guilty, that we fail properly to appreciate the little courtesies that make life easier and our neighbor's lot a trifle less difficult.

Unrequited love is one the tragedies of America's divorce counts! When love of God is unappreciated and not repaid by a creature, life's darkest hour is experienced. When man the creature, shows no appreciation for God, the Creator, we have the greatest tragedy possible.
Today, one of Advent's steps to Christmas affords us the opportunity to return gratitude and to make reparation to God, to thank Him for the many blessings and benefits, and to repair the harm we have done by unrequited love.

Christmas affords us an occasion to make a gift of love to God and neighbor by trying to become more aware and conscious of our gifts and opportunities.

Prayer: Jesus, take our hearts today and purify them in the fire of Your love so that no stain of hatred or enmity may be present to us. Teach us to be conscious of the insignificant little courtesies of life, that we may be grateful for Your love.

Source: Spiritual Steps to Christmas by Very Rev. Msgr. Aloysius Coogan 1953