Wednesday, December 24, 2008

1Tim 2, 15 Women persevere in faith love and holiness

(1Tim 2, 15) Women persevere in faith love and holiness
[15] But she will be saved through motherhood, provided women persevere in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.
(CCC 2366) Fecundity is a gift, an end of marriage, for conjugal love naturally tends to be fruitful. A child does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment. So the Church, which "is on the side of life" (FC 30) teaches that "each and every marriage act must remain open per se to the transmission of life" (HV 11). "This particular doctrine, expounded on numerous occasions by the Magisterium, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act" (HV 12; cf. Pius XI, encyclical, Casti connubii). (CCC 2367) Called to give life, spouses share in the creative power and fatherhood of God (Cf. Eph 3:14; Mt 23:9). "Married couples should regard it as their proper mission to transmit human life and to educate their children; they should realize that they are thereby cooperating with the love of God the Creator and are, in a certain sense, its interpreters. They will fulfill this duty with a sense of human and Christian responsibility" (GS 50 § 2). (CCC 2371) "Let all be convinced that human life and the duty of transmitting it are not limited by the horizons of this life only: their true evaluation and full significance can be understood only in reference to man's eternal destiny" (GS 51 § 4). (CCC 508) From among the descendants of Eve, God chose the Virgin Mary to be the mother of his Son. "Full of grace", Mary is "the most excellent fruit of redemption" (SC 103): from the first instant of her conception, she was totally preserved from the stain of original sin and she remained pure from all personal sin throughout her life. (CCC 509) Mary is truly "Mother of God" since she is the mother of the eternal Son of God made man, who is God himself. (CCC 510) Mary "remained a virgin in conceiving her Son, a virgin in giving birth to him, a virgin in carrying him, a virgin in nursing him at her breast, always a virgin" (St. Augustine, Serm. 186, 1: PL 38, 999): with her whole being she is "the handmaid of the Lord" (Lk 1:38). (CCC 511) The Virgin Mary "co-operated through free faith and obedience in human salvation" (LG 56). She uttered her yes "in the name of all human nature" (St. Thomas Aquinas, STh III, 30, 1). By her obedience she became the new Eve, mother of the living.

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