CCWF helps in discovery of the Uniting of the THEOLOGY OF BODY with the THEOLOGY OF LOVE

This morning the Vatican Information Service, VIS news, published a summary of the talk Pope Benedict XVI gave to the participants of the meeting sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Studies on Marriage and Family. 

http://visnews-en.blogspot.com/

I want to highlight this phrase in the text, which popped out at me in such a beautiful way:

"Benedict XVI noted a few points of reflection to the members of the institute for  'uniting the theology of the body with the theology of love in order to find the unity of the path of humankind'".

This is what we are doing with our CD production of Tota Pulchra! Truth meets beauty!

Mary is the symbolic foundation stone of our work in authentic personhood, in particular the new feminism www.totapulchra.net. 

In my previous post of May 5 I note that "this is our job - to help eyes to see and ears to hear the Good News that is Our Lord, Jesus Christ so as to build a civilization based on love." 

Mary helps us.

Blessed Pope John Paul II placed his trust with all the might he could muster, and that was a lot, on the lap of his divine mother. Quoting Pope Benedict XVI

"He who at an early age lost his own mother, loved his divine Mother all the more. He heard the words of the crucified Lord as addressed to him personally, 'Behold Your Mother'. And so he did: he took her into his own home. Totus Tuus." (from CD dedication to JPII www.totapulchra.net)

John Paul dedicated his Theology of the Body to the Tota Pulchra, handwriting at the top of the first page of manuscript a verse from the Song of Songs, 

"Tota pulchra es, amica mea, et macula non est in te - You are all beautiful, my beloved, and there is no spot, no macula, in you" (4:7) dated December 8, 1974, the feast of the Immaculate Conception (see May 5 post)

With this we know that the path of the California Catholic Women's Forum is providentially merging with the thought of Blessed Pope John Paul II through the all beautiful, the Tota Pulchra. It is a message timely for the world.

God is love!

It is through Mary that we may most easily approach Jesus, her Son, who is Love.

To achieve a lasting peace on earth, we must pray to Jesus through Mary. 

Today is the feast of Our Lady of Fatima where she told us to pray the rosary. From Tota Pulchra's final song, Sobre Os Braços da Azinheira, a song of Fatima,

"she went to the Iria cove . . . where she prayed the rosary while the midday bells invited the people to pray . . . Ave, Ave, Ave Celestial Mother! Ave, Ave, Ave sing Portugal!"

The peace that always seems to evade us can be had through a thorough understanding of who we are and why we are here. Blessed Pope John Paul II gave us the tools to understand the meaning of our bodies through the Theology of the Body and in this way discover the meaning of Love. From today's talk by Pope Benedict, 

"God offers humans a path of redemption to the body, whose language is preserved in the family ... where the theology of the body and the theology of love are intertwined. Here the gift of self in one single flesh is lived in the conjugal love that unites spouses. Here the fruitfulness of love is experienced and life is joined with that of other generations. In the family, humans discover their relationality, not as autonomous individuals who are self-made but as child, spouse, and parent whose identity is based on being called to love, to receiving another's self and to giving oneself to others".

"'The body', he explained, 'speaks to us of an origin that we haven't granted ourselves. ... It is only when recognizing the original love that has given them life that human beings can accept themselves, only then can they be reconciled with nature and with the world'".

We are called to learn the truth of our bodies in love, and in TOB we have the tools to do it. CCWF is taking the challenge to help humankind come to grips with who it is and why it is here. "Christ is Truth and Christ gives us Life and through our feminine genius we can bring others to Life through Truth", (Michele Coldiron, 2009). We began by helping women "acquire in the world an influence, an effect and a power never hitherto achieved" (Vatican II). How? by utilizing their strength in the feminine genius, defined by Pope John Paul II as the special gift of self-giving ingrained in the heart of every woman in a special way. Our dignity and vocation as described in Mulieris Dignitatem has been broken down into a series of forums, copies of which are available from our website, www.ccwf.org.

Read this blog to keep updated on the educational tools we are using to help in the New Evangelization and understanding of our bodies and our vocation. Why are we here, anyway?

Michele Coldiron

Executive Director, CCWF

"We know that we cannot respond alone to our basic need to understand. For however much we think we are self-sufficient, we experience that we do not suffice . . . We must go out of ourselves and go toward the One who is capable of satisfying the width and breadth of our desire". BXVI, May 11 General Audience, Prayer Respond's to Human Being's Desire for God.