Prayer for the World March 12, 2025

Women’s History Month

Song:   Tu Eres La Victoria

Blessed are you who believed, that the promise of God, would take flesh in you, this is the Victory, your faith.

Chorus

Tu eres la Victoria, O Santa Marie, you are what we are all called to be, O Holy Mary.

In you the humble exalt, in you the poor are made glad, the rich and the proud are brought low, Mary, the cause of our hope.  (Chorus)

Woman of Peace, Woman of Prayer, Courageous Disciple and Friend to us All, we turn to you as our Sister now, Victorious in your Journey.  (Chorus)

Introduction

The earliest celebration of Women’s History Month started in March, 1978 by a group of educators in Santa Rosa, California. Organizers selected a week in early March to correspond with International Women’s Day on March 8th.

In 1980, U.S. President Jimmy Carter declared the week of March 8th as National Women’s History Week, urging everyone in the US to participate.  According to President Carter, “Too often the women were unsung and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed. But the achievements, leadership, courage, strength, and love of the women who built America were as valuable as that of the men whose names we know so well.”  The week- long event officially became a month-long one in 1987 when Congress passed a resolution designating March as Women’s History Month.

REFLECTION

• Some women have highlighted their holiness such as Elizabeth Ann Seton, Teresa Calcutta, Josephine Bakhita and many others. These women at different times and in different cultures, gave proof through initiatives of charity, education, and prayer of how the “feminine genius” can uniquely reflect God’s holiness in the midst of our world.

• Think of those unknown or forgotten women who in their own way sustained and transformed families and communities by the power of their witness.

• Think of all our Victory Noll Sisters who ministered among God’s people, under dire situations but in a loving missionary spirit.

• Think of those women in our society who fought for equality for women; those who worked to free slaves during the Civil War; those courageous women who stand for justice, equality, and inclusion for all humanity.

• Think of Mary of Nazareth, who calls each of us to be courageous women of hope in a world marked by violence and injustice.

Quiet Reflection and Prayer

Closing Prayer:   Victorious Woman by Sr Ruth Ellert, OLVM (adapted)

Victorious Lady, Woman of wisdom and strength,

Mother of Jesus the Lord.

You are an aura of the life of God

Ikon of His Word,

Effusion of His glory.

Sisters of Victory, liberated women, involved in history and hope,

Open to the Spirit, free to ask the question: “How can this be?”

Daughters of the Father, bearers of expectant faith, longed for hope,

Always youthful, life of gratuitousness

Like the love that is ever new and ever renewing.

Mary,  Victorious Woman,

Your song of liberation will resound through the ages.

Let us sing, and proclaim it with you.      AMEN