WOMAN AS A DISCIPLE AND APOSTLE IN THE EVANGELIST PRACTICES OF THE CHURCH FROM JESUS TO THE PRESENT

Abstract

This paper intends to look into the evangelist action of women throughout Church history until the present, in which she has incarnated and brought into practice her being as a disciple and as a messenger of Jesus Christ.  Female apostolicity has been contested and denied so far by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, but it is firmly rooted in the person of Jesus, God incarnated in our history. Nevertheless, its not being acknowledged has an influence on women’s restrictions in the access to ministerial priesthood.

    Nonetheless God’s people, summoned by actual reality and led by the Spirit, counsel to go back to the sources so that, from there, the evangelist message can be stirred up, and the tradition sheathed cultural costumes enduring in them be re-signified. The purpose is to build a universal Church for our times in the service of the Kingdom, focused on Jesus Christ and based upon the apostles, a Church destined to give testimony of God’s love among men. 

    Nowadays, evangelization requires leaving the habitual circle in order to encounter our brethren as Jesus did. In every corner of the Earth, many people are looking forward to God and thirsty for the sacramental presence of Jesus Christ. Feminine presence comes forward in these places as testimony of God made man descending to watch us, love us in our sorrows, feed us and reconcile us with ourselves, with the Creator and with the others.

    Fidelity to the gospel requires a permanent search of God’s will; we should stop hindering each other and join forces in the construction of the Kingdom; male and female together shaping the image of God, both sharing the same dignity and capability to embrace the call of the Creator to a consecrated life, ministerial or lay, within the Church.