St. Melania the Younger

St. Melania the Younger was born in 383 to wealthy Christians. Her grandmother was St. Melania the Elder. Her father was a Roman senator. At 14, she married Valerius Pinianus. After two of their children died soon after childbirth, Valerius agreed to devote their lives to religious dedication, including celibacy.

Melania inherited land in Sicily, Britain, Iberia, Africa, Numidia, Mauretania and Italy. She used her wealth to endow monasteries Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, as well as donate to churches and monasteries in Europe, often anonymously.

In 408, the couple moved to Sicily to live a monastic life. When barbarians invaded in 410, Melania, her husband, and her mother fled to Numidia. They founded a convent, led by Melania, and a cloister, led by Valerius. They met and befriended Augustine. In 417, they made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and wound up settling in a hermitage there. Melania met Jerome, and they became good friends. 

Though blessed with vast wealth and familial support, Melania spent her life giving away her possessions and seeking an ascetic life. After her mother died in 431 and her husband died in 432, she built a convent and served as its abbess until her death on Dec. 31, 439. She is regarded as one of the Desert Mothers. Her feast day is Dec. 31 (Julian calendar).

A Lenten Gaudete Sunday

I have trouble showing gratitude. I know how to say “thank you,” and acknowledge my privileges, but I’ve always struggled with expressing gratefulness, even privately. A couple years ago, my penance, regardless of priest or parish, was always to reflect on what I’m grateful for, as if each could hear my melancholy and struggle in each confession.

I’ve worked at it. I try to tell my friends what I appreciate about them. I don’t take friendships for granted, but I’m not one to normally express such gratitudes.

Part of this I think is that I’m better at seeing problems. I’ll nitpick something even if I love it. I’m a perfectionist who wants to everything and everyone to be working at full potential. I don’t expect perfection, but I expect to be moving toward it, be it lining up pens in the “right” order or beating myself up for the one sentence I should have said in the meeting but didn’t. I see the flaws everywhere— the injustices, the diseases, the evil. I focus on those instead of looking at how much is right. 90% is an A to some; it’s 10% short to me. I can like and enjoy something but still only comment on its flaws.

I’m learning that expressing gratitude increases joy. I have so many blessings; of course it does me good to count them. I like receiving compliments; of course I should give them to others. There are terrible things in the world and depressing parts to life, but there is also love and beauty and God’s unceasing patience.

There is a benefit to see the flaws—to push for change, fight for justice, and strive to be closer to perfection. But I have to see the good too, lest I fall into despair. I have to let in joy. I have to let light into the darkness.

It’s been a gloomy Advent for me. I’ve wanted to feel peace and hope and joy and struggled to do so. Advent is traditionally a penitential season, yet we treat it with much more joy than Lent. It’s joyous because we’re waiting the coming of Jesus. Things may be bad now, but the good is coming.

Gaudete. I need the command. Rejoice, let in joy; all will be well.

Dear Philothea

While I’ve read Introduction to the Devout Life several times, I’ve only recently begun diving into St. Francis de Sales’ Treatise on the Love of God. One thing that immediately struck out to me was stance that women and men were equal, in the eyes of God and in the ability to study and know God. His writings are not just for the laity, but both men and women, and he relies on women saints just as much as men, particularly St. Teresa of Avila. In the introduction, he cites her as well as Sts. Catharine of Genoa, Angela of Foligno, Catharine of Siena, and Mechtilde.

Then he even discusses how women often accept communications written to men when it’s applicable to them, yet men refuse to accept communications written to women that are applicable to them:

A great servant of God informed me not long ago that by addressing my speech to Philothea

in the Introduction to a Devout Life, I hindered many men from profiting by it: because they did not esteem advice given to a woman, to be worthy of a man. I marvelled that there were men who, to be thought men, showed themselves in effect so little men, for I leave it to your consideration, my dear reader, whether devotion be not as well for men as for women, and whether we are not to read with as great attention and reverence the second Epistle of S. John which was addressed to the holy lady Electa, as the third which he directs to Caius, and whether a thousand thousand Epistles and excellent Treatises of the ancient fathers of the Church ought to be held unprofitable to men, because they are addressed to holy women of those times. But, besides, it is the soul which aspires to devotion that I call Philothea, and men have souls as well as women.

Nevertheless, to imitate the great Apostle in this occasion, who esteemed himself a debtor to every one, I have changed my address in this treatise and speak to Theotimus, but if perchance there should be any woman (and such an unreasonableness would be more tolerable in them) who would not read the instructions which are given to men, I beg them to know that Theotimus to whom I speak is the human spirit desirous of making progress in holy love, which spirit is equally in women as in men.

This Treatise then is made for a soul already devout that she may be able to advance in her design.

I didn’t expect to see such a callout of sexism in the early seventeenth century, but was delighted to see it. It makes me love St. Francis de Sales all the more, and each time I see Theotimus, I know the treatise belongs just as much to Philothea.

The Suffering Woman

My Bible study has been studying women of the Old Testament. Over and over, I’m struck by how much these women suffered. Some were great examples of faith; some were not. Yet each in her own way experienced suffering. Women of that time, like most times, were treated as lesser to men—somewhere between second class and property. Most had no agency in her life. That makes the stories of individual women that have remained to be handed down that much more powerful—even the men could not ignore these women.

One of the stories that has stuck with me most is that of Leah and Rachel. Leah was the eldest. When Jacob wanted to marry Rachel, he served their father seven years, but Laban insisted the eldest be married off first. So Jacob married Leah, then negotiated for Rachel in return of seven more years. Within a month, the two sisters now shared a husband.

Leah was stuck in a marriage where her husband loved another woman more. She longed for her husband’s love, and it wasn’t repaid. She did nothing wrong, and she gave him several children, yet she could not win his affection, instead watching it be poured onto another. Meanwhile, Rachel had the love of her husband, but she could not bear children—the primary duty of a wife. Her desire to give her husband children and to bear her own children probably weighed on her every month, especially as she watched Leah bear children.

I don’t think the sisters were jealous or competitive. But they each suffered their own heartbreak while having to live alongside another woman who had what they desired, compounding their pain.

And isn’t this the story of woman? Desire to be loved and share love, disappointment, carrying our burdens, carrying on. The courage and strength of women are the intangible victories won in the heart—getting up each morning to suffer and keep going.

Leah never received the favor of Jacob. Rachel did eventually bear two children, but she died in childbirth, naming the son Benoni, “son of my mourning.” Jacob renamed him Benjamin. There is not a happy ending for the mothers of the Twelve Tribes. But their suffering is acknowledged and remembered. They are seen.

And even for the women not chronicled in the Old Testament, they do not suffer forgotten. God sees their pain; he hears their cries. He seeks love and justice and consolation for them. Women are not secondary to God. He knows our longings and their strengths. He knows our obstacles and their weaknesses.

We will suffer. But we can suffer together. We can suffer and remember. We can suffer and love. We can suffer and keep the faith.