Photo Caption: Stefanie Rupert serves tea duing the Mother-Daughter Tea sponsored June 22 by the diocesan Office of Evangelization and Family Life.

By: By Nancy Piccione

Mary, the mother of God, “personifies faith” and is an authentic, realistic model for mothers, daughters, and all women, author and speaker Kate Wicker told dozens of mothers and daughters at a tea party June 22.

“Mary doesn’t want us to worry about how our imperfection compares to her perfection,” Wicker told the group. “She’s the cause of our joy, not the cause of our guilt.”

Wicker, who blogs at KateWicker.com, is author of the 2012 book “Weightless: Making Peace with Your Body,” and a frequent speaker and commentator. She was the guest speaker on “Mary, Model of Faith” at the tea party, sponsored by the diocesan Office of Evangelization and Family Life at the Spalding Pastoral Center in Peoria.

Tea party-goers were treated to tea and sweets, and many donned hats, gloves and other finery for the party as well as portraits taken prior to the tea party by photographer Daryl Wilson. For part of the afternoon, younger daughters had the option to attend an age-appropriate Eucharistic Adoration time and catechesis with the Apostolic Sisters of the Community of St. John, followed by a craft project.

WAYS MARY PERSONIFIES FAITH
Mary’s motherhood is the way many Catholics know and love Mary best, and Wicker said she is among them.

“Mary takes maternal empathy to new heights,” Wicker offered. “For me it seemed that whatever season of life I was in, I could turn to Mary because she was a daughter of God, a mother, and a woman. Mary’s overwhelming virtues did not intimidate me, but inspire me.”

Wicker offered three others ways, in addition to Mary’s motherhood, that Mary demonstrates faith personified: as a trusting daughter of God, as a woman, and a beauty icon.

As a daughter, Mary trusted and accepted in God and His plan for her and her Son.

Wicker encouraged the daughters present to turn to Mary because “she knows what it feels like to be misunderstood, to be lonely, to feel like you don’t have any friends, or the friends you do have don’t understand you. Mary knows isolation very well. . . . Yet she trusted, and accepted God’s endless love for her. And you can, too.”

As a woman, Mary was aware of her female nature. Wicker shared how Blessed John Paul II wrote about this theme in his apostolic letter, “On the Dignity and Vocation of Woman:”

“He ‘has done great things for me’: this is the discovery of all the richness and personal resources of femininity, all the eternal originality of the ‘woman’, just as God wanted her to be, a person for her own sake, who discovers herself ‘by means of a sincere gift of self.'”

REFLECTS TRUE BEAUTY
As a beauty icon, Mary reflects true beauty, rather than the mixed messages our culture puts forth for girls and women, from “pretty in pink” and “princess in training” for young girls, to “superwoman” for adult women.

“In Mary, we see womanhood as it was meant to be…. she is the ultimate example of ‘feminine genius,'” said Wicker, quoting again from John Paul II’s letter. Mary’s humility and knowledge that beauty flows from the inside out, bears witness to what is true and good. She also helps women understands that the love of beauty and attraction to what is beautiful is meant to lead us to God.

“It’s OK to be drawn to beauty . . . the pursuit of beauty is good because it leads us to a deeper yearning for God, because God is the source of all beauty, all that is beautiful,” said Wicker.