Common of Holy Women — Generic prayer to the holy wives, mothers and widows

The Church venerates, with a proper liturgical Common, the Holy Women who were neither consecrated virgins nor martyrs — holy wives (St Monica, mother of St Augustine), mothers of families (St Gianna Beretta Molla, physician and mother of four, who gave her life for her unborn daughter; St Zélie Martin, mother of St Thérèse), widows (St Bridget of Sweden, widow and foundress; St Elizabeth of Hungary, widowed queen), non-martyr religious (St Teresa of Calcutta, foundress of the Missionaries of Charity). Sanctity in matrimony, in motherhood, in widowhood consecrated to the service of the poor, is one of the most magnificent expressions of the universal vocation to sanctity affirmed by the Second Vatican Council (Lumen Gentium 39-42). This prayer is the generic collect for any feast of a non-virgin Holy Woman in the Calendar.

Lord God, who in every condition of feminine life — consecrated virgins, wives, mothers, widows, religious — gave to your handmaids the grace to love you with an undivided heart and to be in the Church salt and light: grant us to venerate worthily the Holy Woman (N.) celebrated today, and to discover, in each state of life, the proper way of sanctity which she travelled.

To the Christian women of our time, grant the courage of public faith in a world that often ridicules marriage, motherhood and conjugal fidelity. To spouses, the grace to imitate St Monica in the tears of prayer for wayward children. To mothers, the fortitude of St Gianna Beretta Molla, who chose the life of her child against her own. To widows, the interior peace which Saints Bridget and Elizabeth found in renewed adherence to Christ, the only Spouse. To religious women, the missionary ardour of St Teresa of Calcutta for the poorest of the poor.

May every woman, in any state, be for the Church an image of the Woman par excellence, Mary, the Theotokos.

Through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Our Father. Hail Mary. Glory be.