Pulsatilla or pasque flower is a plant which flowers during the Paschal/Easter season. Its flowers are very beautiful and sweet smelling; they are considered as symbols of deep love and of personal sacrifice for the sake of love. Women who, like the pulsatilla plant, produce ‘flowers’ of dedicated love, self-less service and amiable feminine virtues, such as, goodness, generosity, gentleness, beauty and a constant affectionate disposition, are called "pulsatilla women".

God forms every female child with very special care and sows in its soul rich seeds of goodness, beauty and love, so that it can develop into a pulsatilla woman, for, according to God’s plan, every female has a special destiny and inalienable feminine functions to fulfil in life.

Together with the man she loves with a deep, personal and exclusive marital love, she has to found a new family of their own. Experiencing the dedicated love of his wife, the husband easily grows as a loving person. The husband and wife, sharing their mutual intimate affection, through common effort, transform their family into a home of love. In this work the role of the loving wife is decisive.

The woman has to co-operate with God very closely and in an irreplaceable way in the work of creating new human beings in his own image and likeness by being a tenderly loving and caring mother to the children he gives to her family. She has to conceive in love the new human life in her womb, carry it for ten months with very personal love and nurture it with affection and bring it forth in pain and when the child is born, she has to receive it into her bosom, nurse it at her breasts and accompany it through the various stages of its growth, as infant, child, boy or girl, adolescent, young man or woman. This, indeed, is a task that demands all the love and dedication and energy that only a loving mother is capable of. Without a home of love, suffused with motherly love, no child will grow into its full stature. That is why women even in adverse conditions usually do not lose their pulsatilla character between twenty and thirty years of age, that is, their child-bearing period.

The pulsatilla woman who is tenderly loving and generously caring radiates light and joy in the family. She is a source of grace for the family, for she is close to God and is usually a prayerful person. She mediates God’s love to all who come in touch with her.

A pulsatilla woman, married or celibate, is a graceful person because she diffuses the goodness and beauty that God has poured into her heart. Her appearance is charming even if her body dimensions may not measure up to the standards of ‘miss world’ contests. Think, for example, of BL.Mother Teresa. Her voice is sweet, her gait and movements are graceful; her eyes are radiant; her face is luminous, gently smiling, reflecting her inner goodness and joy. She is mild, peaceful, humble, generous, patient, pleasing in word and deed, noble in mind and heart. She is, in one word, a loving person who incorporates in herself the qualities of love as described by St. Paul in 1 Cor. 13.

That is why she loves spontaneously all human beings - men and women, boys and girls and all the children. She smiles at all with an innocent and sweet smile and spreads joy all around. She is ready to help any one in need. Her mission is to be a source of light, grace and beauty on earth

But we meet many proud, cruel, wicked and ugly women whose faces are tense and harsh, who speak insulting words, who act with hatred and deceit, who are jealous, greedy, selfish and revengeful. Such women are called "sepia women". Sepia or cuttle-fish in the sea ejects around its prey a black fluid which obstructs and kills it, and eats it and escapes hiding in the black fluid. Similarly the sepia women devour all whom they dislike, especia-lly, innocent pulsatilla women whom they instinctively hate, spraying around them the venom of jealousy, hatred and calumnies.

If God has destined all females to develop into pulsatilla women, why do we find so many sepia women all around?

During their growth process as babies, children, girls or adolescents, these women were subjected to many unfavourable conditions and they went through many traumatic experiences. If sons and daughters, especially daughters, do not receive under love, affectionate care, and protection and encouragement from their parents, particularly their mother, their normal development would severely suffer. Bad example given by the parents is disastrous. The immense possibilities that God has implanted in them will not flower. They will grow up distorted and stunted in every way, psychologically, mentally and spiritually. They will turn out to be sepia women unless this wrong course is corrected soon.

This chance for a course correction is available in marriage. If her husband is a loving person who responds to her intense feminine love with corresponding marital love and cares for her with deep personal affection and fulfils her basic needs and desires, including her ardent desire to consummate and celebrate their conjugal love in sexual union, the pulsatilla qualities dormant in her soul would grow rapidly and she would eventually develop into a pulsatilla woman.

If, on the contrary, her husband is an unloving and selfish person who, far from appreciating her gentle affection, fails to fulfil her very personal needs and desires and is interested only in exploiting her, she will suffer intense pain and her pulsatilla nature would be destroyed and she would turn out to be a sepia woman. The beautiful gifts with which God has endowed her are gradually lost and her pure, innocent love is replaced by pessimism, anger and hatred. Her normal feminine needs and desires frustrated by a hard-hearted husband, her grief over her loveless marriage and all her suppressed feelings will surface as gloom, sadness and depression. Her anger at the cruelty she suffers from her husband and in-laws will reappear as thirst for revenge.

Her utter disappointment at her foiled marriage leads to despair and her womanhood of which she was once legitimately proud now appears to her as despicable; she is, indeed, becoming a confirmed sepia woman. She is now irritable, heartless, jealous, cruel and spiteful as suggested above. She might be a revengeful wife, a harsh mother-in law, or a cruel daughter-in-law. Such women become greedy and try to amass money through bribery or theft. They do not believe in the sacredness of womanhood, They despise women and hate men, especially their husbands. But there are, indeed, women who, in spite of good experience from parents and husbands, allow themselves to be corrupted by vices, like selfishness, greed and other passions, and thus become sepia women. Such women often win also their husbands over to support their sepira character.

There are, however, pulsatilla women who, facing painful experiences in the family from wicked husbands, cruel sons and in-laws, preserve their pulsatilla character through faith in God and devotion to duty. These pulsatilla women, tested and purified in the fire of marital catastrophe, should be characterized as heroic Saints.

The possibility of developing pulsatilla character is offered to every religious sister in her order. The noble ideals of the charism of the order will lead the religious surely along the path of pulsatilla virtues. The unconditional love of God, who is both father and mother, deeply experienced in prayer, will fill them with intense joy and peace. The practice of discipleship of the Lord Jesus and of the noble values of his gospel will produce in them pulsatilla character. In this process of development they are normally supported by the family of the community to which they belong.

Blessed Alphonsa was a pulsatilla flower. She had the good fortune of having loving parents and a caring family. In the religious atmosphere of the convent, supported by good superiors and friendly companions, she progressed steadily in virtue. But she was tested by the fire of severe physical sufferings which she endured patiently and transformed into acts of love of God and of men. She thus developed her pulsatilla gifts to a heroic degree and now we revere her as a pulsatilla saint. (Blessed Alphonsa’s virtues are too well known to need any elaboration here ).

Blessed Alphonsa is a challenge to all religious sisters to develop their pulsatilla gifts even when conditions in their convent are not favourable. They have sponsal and maternal functions in the church. They have to co-operate in building up the people of God into a family of love by sharing their feminine affection and by contributing their special gifts as women to enrich all aspects of ecclesial life. They are called to exercise their sisterly and maternal functions in their relationship with various sections of the people of God, for example, being a loving mother to children or who are like children, that is, needing maternal care and help in any way. To fulfil these functions, it is obvious that they must be pulsatilla women.

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