Clothed With Strength and Dignity

– Coming Fall 2023

Clothed with Dignity and Strength Front Cover

“For the first time, I felt welcomed by women who have always been there, because Amy made the introductions. As a mother I am grateful to pass the rich legacies of these women on to my daughter. As a daughter of the King, I now appreciate the sisters before me.”

-Liv Harrison, author, speaker, podcaster

Was Rebekah a meddler or a cooperative working with and for God? How was Miriam the first women to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation? Why is Bathsheba a prototype of the Blessed Mother? What can Mary Magdalene teach us about discipleship?

In this first of its kind work, Amy Schisler provides a book with an optional a workbook and video series about women of the Bible for Catholic women. The book highlights twenty-five women and what they can teach us through their lives and examples as precursors of the holy Sacraments. Beginning with Eve and ending with Mary Magdalene, Schisler takes a deeper look at prominent and not-so-prominent women who shaped the course of Biblical history.

Also available will be a workbook and video series. Purchasers of the workbook will gain free access to the video series to be used as an individual or with a group Bible study (group study is highly encourages as the discussion enriches the experience).

Would you like to receive more information about the study as we get closer to the release? You or your bible study group could be among the first people to complete this new study. While the book will be available across multiple platforms, the full study with videos will only be available here.

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Excerpt

Depending upon the source, there are as few as ninety-three and as many as two-hundred-and-five women mentioned in the Bible, and of those, forty-nine are named. These women were wives, mothers, daughters, nursemaids, widows, prostitutes, queens, deceivers, and believers. Some had many children, and others were childless, or were childless until God opened their wombs.

Among the more well-known women, stand those who are but shadows looming in the corners of the Biblical world, yet even those women had some kind of impact on their world and ours. For every mother named Leah, there was a woman who was barren; and for every Mary, there was another woman who spoke for or on behalf of her husband or son. Though the number of men far exceeds the women mentioned in the Bible, often, the women who are mentioned had just as large an impact, and in some cases, a larger impact than their male counterparts.

On my wedding day, my father took the time before he walked me down the aisle, to tell me something I have never forgotten. Instead of saying, be kind to your husband, or be a good mother, or never go to bed angry, or any number of other pieces of advice he could have given me, my father said this, “As a mother, it is up to you to pass along your faith to your children, and as a wife, it is up to you to make sure your husband attends Mass every Sunday and remains faithful to the Church.”

I could have heard his words and thought, what a heavy burden to be placed on a twenty-three-year-old just before she makes her wedding vows. Instead, I like to think that, like Mary, I “kept all these things, pondering them in [my] heart” (Luke 2:19). What I have learned over the many years since my father spoke those words to me is that as a woman, not just a wife or mother, I am called to bring others to Christ and His Church. I must follow our Blessed Mother’s example of humbly participating in God’s plan. “God delights in drawing secondary causes into the dense complexity of his providential plan, granting to them the honor of cooperating with him and his designs. The handmaid of the Lord, who is the Mother of the Church, is the humblest of these humble instruments—and therefore the most effective” (Bishop Robert Barron).

As we will see, not just as wives and mothers, but as women from all walks of life, these women have something to teach us. We owe a debt of gratitude to the women of the bible and to all women who have lived lives of faith. In the words of Saint Pope John Paul the Great, “The Church gives thanks for all the manifestations of the feminine ‘genius’ which have appeared in the course of history, in the midst of all peoples and nations; she gives thanks for all the charisms which the Holy Spirit distributes to women in the history of the People of God, for all the victories which she owes to their faith, hope, and charity: she gives thanks for all the fruits of feminine holiness.”