NOTES for Co1 11:1-16
God created us different: strong and weak, sick and healthy, men and women. Each of us has been given a unique, irreplaceable role, and the weak need the strong no less than the strong need the weak. There are many ministries in the Church, but how can we find our own, the one that corresponds precisely to who we are? What matters most is not so much the benefit that different deeds can bring as becoming and remaining oneself.
This passage is often seen merely as giving instructions about appearance, about the form of dress in which a woman should come to church. That is important too. In our day, however, the issue is rather an awareness of the principal, deepest essence of each of us and of the role each is called to play in creation. Is it fitting to undertake something before understanding who we are by nature and by our position relative to one another in the body of the Church and before God?
“Is it fitting for a woman to pray to God,” to “prophesy,” or to do anything while forgetting by Whom and for what purpose she was created? The “symbol of authority on her, because of the angels” is a sign of the woman’s humility before God and before His design for her, a sign that she remembers what she was originally created for.
How many problems do we have in our relationships with one another and in our families because the psychology of sex has been distorted and, above all, the true role of woman has been forgotten. To accept that you are only a fragile flower in the Lord’s hands, that often you can do nothing but ask and hope, believe, wait, and continue to love: is this not an act of faith? There are, of course, many necessary and important tasks. But there is also the work of preserving and cultivating one’s uniqueness and true nature. Then men, whom everyone so wants to see strong and courageous, will also be able to recognize their uniqueness. Different as we are, we will become one in the Lord. For if we are in the Lord, “neither is man without woman, nor woman without man.”
Today it is difficult to overestimate the role of women in the Church. It is mainly women who have to bear the cross of faith. Yet their constancy in prayer and their love often work miracles. We see, for example, how during times of persecution the simple faith of the “grandmothers” helped the Church survive in our country.