In Honor of International Women's Day, Let Us Now Praise Saints "d'un certain age"

Anna the prophetess, for instance. She was, in a way, the first (human, anyway,) Christian evangelist; (the heavenly host could, I suppose, to be said to have evangelized the shepherds.)

She too, at that very hour, came near to give God thanks, and spoke of the child to all that patiently waited for the deliverance of Israel.

St. Anne, the mother of the Blessed Virgin.
The patient St. Monica, without whose uncesaing prayers, the Church might never have had St Augustine, or at least, had to wait a great deal longer for that wild young man to see the light. (Oh, and yes, I see the peculiarity in my thinking of a woman who lived only to the age of fifty something as being "elderly," but there you are - different times. I don't imagine that Sara in her 80s, for instance, looked like Carmen Dell’Orefice in her 80s.)

 

Blessed, (and oh, so soon saint!) Teresa of Calcutta.
The polymath and all-around Bad-Assertive woman, Hildegard of Bingen, Doctor of the Church.
Saint Josephine Bakhita.
Yes indeed, Happy International Women's Day!