Another is that moment when a different Mary, the future mother of Jesus and three months pregnant, comes face to face with Elisabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist. Poets and composers over the centuries have tried to capture that instant, putting to music that wonderful and spontaneous song of praise from Mary (Luke 1: 39-56), yet none of us can fully understand the electrifying experience that was for these two women who had been chosen by God both to prepare the way, and to bring His Son into the world.

To a woman came the privilege of being first to see the first resurrected Being. It was women who, for the most part, were at the foot of the cross days earlier. And both Old and New Testaments tell of women who serve as examples for men and women – Esther (courage), Ruth (loyalty), Mary, the mother of Jesus (humility and long-suffering).

However appalling some men’s treatment of women may have been through the ages – and there is plenty of blame to place at the feet of both the religious and the secular – it is not what Jesus taught. Much that has been done in the name of religion that is contrary to the principles of the religion itself.

There is a good deal of data to show that women rather than men are the more faithful and active participants in their chosen religions throughout the world today. Indeed, it seems that such women, who choose to accept a religious life, draw great strength and value from it.

I was talking to a woman this week – a prominent academic, high achiever, faithful in her church – who suggested that men turn out better when they are socialized with some characteristics that have commonly been stereotyped as “female” values, but are really human values. It’s those very values – including but not limited to compassion, sensitivity, empathy and intellectual honesty - which, I constantly remind myself, are the core of how Jesus taught us to live.