The Womanly Ideal

PERHAPS no one has more beautifully extolled the womanly ideal than Charles Peguy.

What he admired first and foremost in woman was her special faculty for putting soul into the daily humdrum of the eternal repetitions of everyday life in the home. He has Our Lord say:

My love goes out to you, O most precious one To you, most submissive at the feet of destiny, Most subject to the masters of the feast, Most eager and most solicitous.

I love you so much, O most earnest one, You who are most responsive to claims of work Most unknown and most glorious Most attentive to the care of the fold.

The smallest action, the most ordinary, the most routine, though submerged in the greatest monotony of recurring days and engulfed by the unfolding centuries, can be of immense value if performed with a great love.

You spend yourself utterly, O only needy one, In washing dishes and keeping house O Woman, you who set in order both labors and days.

But then, woman, is not only a worker, a housekeeper, she is a mother, a mother who is solicitous for her little ones, a mother who never tires of contemplating the infinite hidden away behind a curved forehead or stubborn eyes. Man does not sense it. He is not sufficiently delicate or spiritual for that. Woman alone has a glance sufficiently keen and supernatural to discover not only the corporal needs of a fragile and tiny body but also the deep and innocent soul washed by the waters of baptism and rich with countless graces which must be put to good use in the future.

Nothing is so beautiful as a child falling asleep while saying his prayers, says God (according to Peguy) I tell you nothing in the world is so beautiful . . .

Yes, I tell you, I don’t know anything so beautiful in all the world As a little child falling asleep saying his prayers

Under the wings of its Guardian Angel

A little child, who laughs at the angels while beginning to fall asleep

And who gets his prayers all mixed up because he no longer has his mind on them Who mixes up the words of the Our Father with the words of the Hail Mary

While a veil is already falling upon his eyelids The veil of night upon his sight and upon his voice.

Truly, it is woman’s honor and her duty, as a consequence of her vocation, to be very near to souls and to the supernatural world. Then too woman is more loving than man. She has a sense of pity and compassion. She always has something in common with the sympathetic traits manifested by Joan of Arc even as a little girl. One day she saw two little starving and sad-hearted children walking along a roadway.

“It grieved me so much, I gave them all my bread, my noon-day lunch and my four o’clock snack. Their joy hurt me: I thought of all the other starving people who had nothing to eat, so many starving people, countless hungry people. I felt that I was going to break out weeping. I gave them my bread. A beautiful gesture! But they will be hungry again tonight; they will be hungry again tomorrow . . . There, they have gone into the future, into distress, into the anxiety for the future . . . O, my God, who will give them their daily bread?”

Joan’s great compassion for souls tore even more at her heart than her anguish over the physical hunger of bodies. “If only we could see the beginning of Your reign established, o my Lord!” she prayed.

Honor to Woman for the greatness of her heart!