The Christian Woman

Conferences of the Rev. Père Lacordaire, p. 548, 551

To the Christian woman, by a special delegation, as an employment of her leisure and of the superabundance of her virtues, all the poor, all the miseries, all the afflictions, all the tears have been confided. It is she who, in the name and in the stead of Jesus Christ, has to visit the hospitals and the garrets, to discover the groanings and lamentations, to explore the vast domain of grief. To others belongs the devotedness of doctrine, to her it is given to succour and to help. To others it belongs to represent Jesus Christ by the glave of the Word, it is for her to represent him by the glave of Love. Shall I, without enlarging upon this subject, for there would be too much to say, —shall I bring before you a comparison which will say all in one word? Well, there is the same difference between the heathen and the Christian worlds, as between the priestess of Venus and the Sister of St. Vincent de Paul. Go to that famous temple of Corinth, and contemplate woman; enter our hospitals, and behold there the Sister of Charity! There are the two worlds: choose between them.…

There are in the world three kinds of weakness: the weakness of destitution, which is the poor; the weakness of sex, which is woman; the weakness of age, which is the infant. These three kinds of weakness form the strength of the Church, who has allied herself with them, and has taken them under her protection by placing herself under theirs. This alliance has changed the face of society, because, until it was formed, the weak was sacrificed to the strong, the poor to the rich, woman to man, the infant to all. The Church, in uniting herself to weakness against those who have attained to the threefold power of patrimony, of virility, and of maturity, has re-established in an equilibrium all rights and duties. Egotism, however, does not consider itself vanquished; it seeks, in a manner more or less disguised, to reestablish the heathen order upon the ruins of the Christian order; that is to say, the oppressive domination of strength over weakness. Will it succeed? Will it be able to burst the bond which retains the poor, the woman, and the infant, in the unity of the Church? I am sure that it will not; for, under the feeble hands which I have just named, there is the hand of God, the hand of Jesus Christ, the hand of the blessed Virgin Mary, —all the powers of reason, of justice, and of charity.