Dear Friends,
Long before there was Mother’s Day, there were mothers…every day of the year…year in, year out.
Our society talks about birth mothers, natural mothers, foster mothers, stepmothers, single mothers and other mothers, e.g. women and men who have never given birth but who give life and nurture individuals and groups.
What we celebrate today is the motherhood of all nurturers: the motherhood of many including the motherhood of Mary and the motherhood of God.
There hasn’t been a time in Christian history that people have not been stirred to honor Mary. She is Theotokos, the Mother of God. On the cross, Jesus gave her to John and therefore to all of us as mother. (See last weekend’s blog.)
Mary is the first disciple of Jesus, our friend, companion, and model of how to say “yes” to God. She shows us how to be faithful to that Yes.
And then there is the motherhood of God. The medieval theologians Anselm and Hildegard of Bingen and Pope John I spoke and wrote of Jesus our Mother and God our Mother. Jesus refers to Himself as a mother hen, gathering her brood (Luke 13.34).
The mothering qualities we treasure in life are found first in God. If God is our Mother, then we imagine God when we activate the mothering qualities in our lives.
Mothering is arduous. Consider the Ukrainian crisis today. Amanda Taub, writing from Poland for The New York Times, reminds us that 90% of the refugees are women, children, and senior men. Ukrainian men between 18 and 60 had to stay behind to serve in the military. Life for these refugee mothers and their children is precarious. It’s exceedingly complicated to find affordable childcare and employers who allow flextime. How to provide?
The story of the Ukrainian women has its counterparts in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia, to mention a few other countries.
Most of the time, our minds and our culture picture mothers as honored, well provided for and happy. We hardly want to think about the pain that mothers suffer at various times in their life. They don’t talk about it, but it remains in their memories. It is part of what forms their character. Remember how Simeon told Mary in the temple after Jesus’ presentation “a sword will pierce your heart” (Luke 2.35)? Mothers join with Mary in that piercing and its memory.
On this Mother's Day, when we think about the Risen Christ’s gift of abundant love and we remember all the mothers we have known, we commit ourselves to that same divine love – love that is active, strong, inclusive and unending.
~Sister Joan Sobala
