During my tenure as a stay at home mom, something happened one day that was particularly enlightening as a mother of two sons. A very pregnant friend was in her nesting phase, and a picture she had framed for the nursery was ready at the frame shop. She asked if I could take her to pick it up, get out of the house, etc. I had one of my sons, age two at the time, in tow that day. When we got to the frame shop, the picture turned out to be much larger than I had expected. It was too large for my friend to carry, and too large for me to carry with one hand. Before we headed out of the store, I began to get nervous. My son, like many two year olds, was a bit of a wild child. He loved to run and play, and keeping him calm in parking lots was always a tricky spot. He would want to run as soon as he hit fresh air--a natural impulse, just not a very safe one. His golden curly locks would blow in the wind like the carefree adventurous soul that he is. He was always ready for excitement and adventure, rather impulsive, very active, ready to make a break for it if he saw a chance to run and roam free, terrifying in parking lots. There was an ease and carefree lightheartedness that was a part of his little spirit, an inquisitive, easy going, roll with the punches kind of kid.
I was especially nervous walking out to the car that day because my hands were full with the picture, and I did not have a spare hand to hold his. I was also concerned that he would break away from my friend if she walked with him, knowing that she was not in a state to be running after him if he did so. I thought for a moment about what to do, and just before we walked out of the store, I set down the picture, dropped down to his eye level to talk to my son and said, “Mommy needs your help. [Friend] has a big baby in her belly, so she has to walk slowly. I have to carry this big picture, and I need you to help her get to the car safely. Can you hold her hand and walk with her to keep her safe?” A deeply serious look came over his face, and he nodded solemnly with his blonde ringlets. His entire demeanor shifted in that moment. My son took our friend's hand, and with great care and solicitude walked slowly with her through the parking lot to our van. He escorted her as if it were his sworn duty with not one attempt to dash or run through the parking lot. It was the first time I had witnessed anything like that in him.
This event is a particular instance of something which seems to be innate, a part of his nature as a man (albeit only a two year old man). My son’s service to another brought out something in him that I had not witnessed before but that seemed to already be there. St. John Paul II frequently quoted the following from Gaudium et Spes: “Man cannot find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.”[
1]The change in his demeanor was profound and immediate, as if something had awakened that was there all along. He instinctively knew that protecting the vulnerable was something he was particularly called to do. My son is now a quick-witted teenager. When I asked if he would mind if I shared this story about him, he balked, saying somewhat incredulously, “You’re using two year old me as the archetype of masculinity?” I offer the reader the same answer I gave my son: No, I am not holding up my son as the archetype of masculinity. That honor is reserved to Christ. Rather, I offer this event as an example of the masculine genius.
What then is the masculine genius? In his encyclical letter, Mulieris Dignitatem, “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women,” St. John Paul II identifies a feminine genius, a particular gift associated with women. [
2] The key component of this feminine genius is receptivity, or a capacity to openness to the other, which is exhibited in every woman’s call to motherhood (physical or spiritual). [
3] If there is a feminine genius, then it follows that there is also a complementary masculine genius. While John Paul II did not define a masculine genius, theologians have offered some possibilities. For the purposes of this article, I will use Maria Fedoryka’s identification of “spontaneity” as the defining quality of the masculine genius [
4] and Theresa Farnan’s exploration of every man’s call to fatherhood (physical or spiritual),especially through the example of St. Joseph. [
5]
In her study of the metaphysical properties of gender, Maria Fedoryka has identified spontaneity as the quality associated with the masculine genius. Spontaneity, not to be confused with spontaneousness, is “the technical term for ‘going out of oneself,’ for ‘giving’.” [
6] It is the inclination to initiate, to explore, to put oneself forward. Fedoryka offers the caveat, “gender is most fundamentally a ‘quality’ of being.” [
7] This quality colors or intones one’s actions by the very nature of one’s embodiment as man or woman. She continues, “The man is a human person existing in the mode of spontaneity; the woman is a human person existing in the mode of receptivity.” [
8] Likewise, Sister Prudence Allen states, “There seems to be a close connection between some characteristics identified as masculine and the male biological identity, and some similarly identified as feminine and the female biological identity. However, this connection is fluid and open to interpretation within a particular culture...In this case, however, we are not moving to an androgyny, or a theory of identity of all human beings, because the starting point, the maleness and the femaleness, is always different for the two sexes.”[
9] Such a premise allows for a range of expression. Thus, one could say gender is an essential quality of being, the expression of which is particular to each person in his/her own uniqueness. If the defining aspect or inclination of the masculine genius is spontaneity, then such would explain two seemingly conflicting sides of my son's behavior that day. Both his desire to run free and explore, without regard for consequence, and his care for another, his willingness to serve as protector and defender of our friend, flow from the spontaneity of the masculine genius.
”Theresa Farnan holds that, likewise, through the masculine genius, “The vulnerability and need for protection of those most helpless evoke a paternal response in men, explaining why men are drawn to military, police, and rescue services often before they have any children of their own. This is part of the masculine gift of self--acceptance of responsibility for another person.” [
10] In her article “On the Dignity and Vocation of Men,” Farnan looks to John Paul II’s exhortation on St. Joseph, Redemptoris Custos, as a companion piece to Mulieris Dignitatem, dated exactly one year apart, and uses Custos to define aspects of the masculine genius, primarily rooted in fatherhood. Joseph is the one to whom Christ, the Redeemer, was entrusted to as his father on earth. He was the custodian and guardian of the one who reveals humanity to itself. [
11] John Paul II says of the fatherhood of St. Joseph: “He took her in all the mystery of her motherhood. He took her together with the Son who had come into the world by the power of the Holy Spirit. In this way he showed a readiness of will like Mary’s with regard to what God asked of him through the angel. [
12] This readiness of will, his readiness to radical obedience to the promptings of God, is the mark of righteousness for both men and women.
In his letter promulgating the current Year of St. Joseph, Patris Corde, Pope Francis further offers the life of St. Joseph as an example of the call to holiness found in self-gift: “Joseph found happiness not in mere self-sacrifice but in self-gift. In him, we never see frustration but only trust. His patient silence was the prelude to concrete expressions of trust. Our world today needs fathers. It has no use for tyrants who would domineer others as a means of compensating for their own needs. It rejects those who confuse authority with authoritarianism, service with servility, discussion with oppression, charity with a welfare mentality, power with destruction. Every true vocation is born of the gift of oneself, which is the fruit of mature sacrifice.” [
13] When my son set aside his desire to run free through the parking lot in order to care for another, to walk with another, he exhibited the heart of the masculine genius. Naturally, as a small two year old, he did not offer much physical protection; however, he did conduct himself in a manner fitting of a guardian. Part of himself was revealed for the first time that day.
