Happy Mothers' Day!

Dedication: to all the mothers, physical and spiritual.

Mother Mary, pray for us!

The Dominican perspective has recently brought my attention to the connection of the word mother in Latin to the word matter and hence to the presentation of an intellectual argument for the consideration of mother earth which defends not only the sanctity of our physical nature, but also its revelation in a profound way of God's presence through His gift of motherhood.  While the gift of fatherhood involves a certain distance and separation from and hence image of the transcendence of God, the gift of motherhood that reveals God's presence in a particular way through the body because of giving life through her body presents to us the immanence of God.  He is not only transcendent, but immanent, closer to us than we are to ourselves as Saint Catherine of Siena would say.

 

Often the Gnostic error creeps in by one way or another that the natural and physical is bad while the supernatural and spiritual is good, but both are necessary for us to be a complete human person and both are good.  Saint Thomas Aquinas points us to how the order of nature and the order of grace work together in his much-quoted and often mistranslated phrase: "Grace perfects nature."  We do not need to disdain the natural world and all that is created, but to allow grace to perfect it.  We can never destroy our physical nature and become like the angels, for that would be to lose something precious to our very being--so precious that Christ Himself chose to make a marriage of mankind to God by taking on human flesh through a Mother.  Hence in a particular way the gift of motherhood, a natural gift, perfected by grace, becomes elevated to the most perfect icon of God's love for His creation, as evidenced by the glory of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Full of Grace.

 

Prayer, then, for a mother flows naturally from her physical being--her being for the other that takes so much of her attention and her faculties to be focused upon nourishing her little ones and guiding them in growing into the depths of the spiritual life through their contact with her love poured out for them in all the many little sacrifices that remain hidden in the soil of her being.  While men need to go up to the mountaintop to encounter God, mothers find that the Lord comes to them right where they are, touching them gently with the outpouring of His grace and love, showing them moment by moment how to be united with Him in the total sacrifice of themselves just as Christ gave up His life on the Cross.

 

Blessed are you who lay down your lives for your children--and above all for Christ whom you nourish in your children.  Blessed are you who offer the immolation of your body as a holocaust of love to the Father.  Blessed are you who sorrow for those who have strayed or for fear that one day your children may stray from the Faith.  Blessed are you who long so much for the holiness of your children and direct all your efforts toward it.  Your reward will be great in Heaven.

 

May Christ today through His Blessed Mother pour out upon you an abundance of grace and joy to sustain you in your vocation of motherhood!