"Sophia" signifies the answer which emerges from the divine call of creation and election. It expresses precisely this: that there is a pure answer and that God's love finds its irrecovable dwelling place within it... From the viewpoint of the New TEstament, wisdom refers, on one side, to the Son as the Word, in whom Go dcreates, but on the other side to the creature, to the ture Israel, who is personified in the humble mnaid whose whole existence is marked by the attitude of Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.  Sophia refers to the Logos, the Word who establishes wisdom, and also to the womanly answer which receives wisdom and brings it to fruition... The figure of the woman is indispensable for the structure of biblical faith. She expresses the reality of creation as well as the fruitfulness of grace. The abstract outlines for the hope that God will turn toward his people receive, in the New Testament, a concrete, personal name in the figure of Jesus Christ. At that same moment, the figure of the woman...also emerges with a name: Mary... To deny or reject the feminine aspect in belief, or, more concretely, the Marian aspect, leads finally to the negation of creation and the invalidation of grace. It leads to a picture of God's omnipotence that reduces the creature to a mere masquerade and that also completely fails to understand the God of the Bible, who is characterized as being the creator and the God of the covenant--the God for whom the beloved's punishment and rejection themselves become the passion of love, the cross.

Pope Benedict XVI