The Masculine Task: Contemplate the Feminine

The mission and delight of the male is to observe, cherish, delight in, honor, protect, affirm, and adore the female.

Woman is God's last and greatest creation. Only with Eve was God's work complete. Only then could he look and see that all was "very good." She is greater than anything in Creation, even than the highest of angels. Tradition has it that Lucifer in envy of her status rebelled and created his own kingdom. His passion is to despise and defile the feminine. In Mary we see that Creation, even as fallen, has attained its final end. Nothing in the universe or human history will ever equal or surpass what God accomplished in this Virgin. What remains in time and space is the flowering, unfolding and culmination of the miracle of Mary.

The feminine is charming, comforting, delightful, lovely, inspiring, attractive, fascinating, encouraging, ennobling, captivating.

The feminine is generous, compassionate, nurturing, welcoming, sacrificial, serene, self-effacing, surrendered, receptive, trusting, edifying.

The feminine is sensitive and vulnerable to suffering, sadness, violation, anxiety, hysteria, and domination. 

God's image is most perfectly reflected in "male and female" and the love they give each other. 

Consider:

Adam first glance at Eve:  "This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh."

The baby Jesus looking at the beatific face of his beautiful mother.

Joseph watching over mother and child: surging with virile tenderness, ferocity, awe, gratitude, adoration.

Jesus on the cross, looking down at the face of his mother, his bride, his co-mediatrix of all graces. And giving her, as his final gesture, to the Beloved Disciple, which is to all of us.

Virility only becomes itself in the face of the feminine which in its preciousness and splendor arouses masculinity as tenderness, care, protectiveness, strength, courage, ferocity, awe, gratitude, self-sacrifice, admiration and adoration. 

Yes...this is a proposal of the Mysticism of the Masculine/Feminine! Let us exult in our own virility and femininity. Let us magnify the Lord, with Mary our Mother.