Ursuline Cluster Meeting Talk

Thank you all for inviting me here.

My name is Jennie Mertens, and I am a religion teacher at Saint Ursula.

I was askedto share a reflection connected to the Saint Angela prayer service we offereda few years ago.Thisservice explored the gifts of women –

young women at our school, Ursuline women,

andthe contributions of women in our church, country & global community.

At Saint Ursula, we often speak about how women’s gifts, voices and very bodies reflect and celebrate God in unique ways. Inspired by the women who have come before us, our studentsareinvited to discover their own gifts –

to celebrate themselves made in God’s image…

deeply loved, beautiful and wholejust as they are.

For teen girls today, coming to believe this truthcan be a long and challenging journey.To believe that one is made in God’s image brings girls into direct conflict with cultural messagesthat sayquite the opposite.

Especially with today’s mass media, students are flooded with messagestelling them that they are NOT made in God’s image. Girls feel tremendous pressure to be more beautiful or perfect – to change their appearance or achieve something great in order to be loved. Many, many teens struggle with issues of self-esteem, with criticism and even hatred towards their bodies, their gifts and talents – and their goodness in the world.

Soit’s challenging to say:

“You are formed in God’s image!

You reflectGod not because of what you DO or how you LOOK…

butsimply because ofwho you ARE.”

These conversations raise some important questions. And often, my studentsask:

So -- who isGod then?

What does it mean to be a woman and to reflect God?

How can we describe God? What does God look like?

Girls sense that,somehow,our words and language matter.

Our language about God and faith – about who and what is holy, good and valued.In powerful ways, our self-image is bound up in the language of faith, especially in the language and images we use to describe God. Ultimately, our image of God teaches us what to value as important, beautiful, and holy.

Father, Brother, King, Lord: these popular images are beautiful ways to understand and celebrate the Divine. While this understanding of God is valuable, it oftenbecomes the only imageto which girls are exposed.

As students grow through high school,and as their relationship with God deepens – girls begin searching for language and images that can also include and resonate with their own womanhood and their emerging sense of self.

In a way, students begin to ask:

“Who am I, a young woman, in this faith? Can I belong, too?”

Girls become veryaware of how our Catholictradition struggles to fullycelebrate the feminine in our faith. Looking around, girls don’t often find themselves reflected.

Our songs and readings,

Prayers, hymns and liturgical rites–

Our ecclesial leaders and God Himself – are male.

This poverty of language for women (and especially for a feminine Divine!) makes it difficult for girls to feel valued – and to value their own gifts in turn. Thiscultural and ecclesial devaluation of women manifests in troubling ways.

We can see it surfacing

In the violence and discrimination experienced by women across the world.

It also surfaces in the lives of ourstudents.

So many girls struggle with caring for themselves…

with eating disorders or self-harm,

a sense of alienation from others, or from their own hearts.

Girls share a tremendousanxiety about their body – so pressured to look or act or become something different. Manyalso experience and/or witnesssexual violence; all of them are raised in a contemporarymedia culture in which women’s objectification is simply the norm.

Their stories and sharings reveal just how difficult it can be for a girl to believe in herself as made in God’s image -- to feel connected to God’s Spirit within her.

Recovering this connection (our power as women!) is a journey that begins with language. Our language for God is especially crucial tosupporting girls’ faith journey. Ultimately, this language can empower young women toimagine and speak a God whose flesh makes sacred our own.

So –What God is this like?

Many girls feel connected with the image of a Mother God.

We explore this “God as Mother” – birthing us in the world, dancing with us, weeping and laughing as we do. She is a God who stands with us and for us. She folds every part of us up in Her arms – and grieves for the shining beauty we possess, and yet cannot see.

It can be incredibly liberating for students to learn that celebrating women as made in God’s female image has deep roots in the Christian tradition. From Wisdom Sophia in the Old Testament to Jesus’ own radical inclusivity, our faith can point us to the sacrament of our own female bodies.

Again and again, we return to the doctrine of the incarnation –

God encountered in the Eucharist, Christ present and alive even today.

The incarnation invites us to more fully know ourselvesasthe Body of Christ.

Women, too, areliving, breathing incarnations of God-made-flesh.

As part of our prayer service, we created a guided reflection that ties together many of the themes I’ve mentioned. It’s a PowerPoint reflection that presents images, Scripture and different writings that encourage girls tohonor themselves in God’s image.

I’ll conclude by simply playing this reflection. We hope it will be valuable source for reflection – that it can offer a sense of where our students are at… and how we seek to support their faith development.