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!

A Mother's Heart is a Gethsemane

 Not one of the apostles could stay awake to keep watch with Christ as He suffered His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, but I cannot help but believe there was one who kept watch with Him even though she was not in the Garden with Him.  Perhaps some of the mystics wrote about His Mother keeping watch in prayer with Him that night wherever she happened to be.  How could such a Mother, united so closely to her Son, not know in her heart and soul of His agony?

A mother suffers when her children suffer.  Perhaps in a way she even suffers more than they suffer, for she can see more clearly than they where their paths lead and the pain they will bring upon themselves.  She wants to spare them all the suffering that she can—even to wishing she could take on their pain for them.

"Father, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless not My will but Thine be done."

So Christ prayed in Gethsemane.  How powerless He must have felt as He knelt and prayed, faced with the anguish of knowing the suffering He would undergo.  Likewise how powerless a mother feels as she prays to the Father that He might take away her cup, which is to spare her children their suffering.

It is easy to focus on Christ's agony as His fear and terror of the cruel torture He would experience in being scourged, crowned with thorns, mocked, condemned to death, and crucified.  Yet what is such physical suffering in comparison to the pain of His heart?

He chose to suffer out of love.  Consider for a moment what that means: He suffered such a cruel death not merely to fulfill the demands of justice and allow us to enter heaven, but because He loves us and desires us to be in intimate relationship with Him.  One who loves infinitely must suffer infinitely.

He loves you and wants you close to His heart.  You.  Not the you that you would like to be, but you as you are.  You have a special place in His heart that He gives to none other.

So many turn away from such love.  Who can bear it?

Think of the pain you have ever felt when someone rejected your love.  His pain in Gethsemane—the cup He asked His Father to take away—must have been bitter with unrequited love. He longed so much for all to love Him and yet knew how many would reject Him. He must have felt as He knelt there that His sacrifice was in vain—that it was not enough for Him to suffer such pain out of love, for it would not be enough to win the hearts of all to love Him.  The devil must have tempted Him with the folly of His sacrifice, urging Him to give it up as fruitless because He would give all that He had and it would not be enough.

A mother's heart serves as a similar battleground.  A mother gives everything she has and it is not enough.  How much she must be tempted to think that it is all in vain and to feel the agony of her own powerlessness in the face of what she desires with all her heart and soul.  Truly she is united in that pain with Christ in Gethsemane.

IV. Jesus Meets His Mother

V. We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee.

R. Because by Thy holy Cross, Thou hast redeemed the world.

How could our Lady bear to see her Son suffer so dreadfully?  Every mother's heart aches for her children and she longs to be able to take those pains herself so that sometimes she offers a greater sacrifice by seeing others suffer than by suffering herself.  Mothers hate to feel powerless, for they must reach out to serve, to love, to lift up: it is their very nature.

Yet Mary, the Mother of God, did not try to take away her Son's suffering as she followed Him on the way to the cross.  Her willingness to suffer with Him by seeing Him suffer united her loving heart with His.

When finally she broke through the crowd to meet Him face to face, the tears must have streamed down her wordless face that saw His face so disfigured.  She must have longed to take Him into her arms to comfort Him as she had when He had been a little child, but she could not, for that would have renewed His pains a thousand-fold.

Perhaps she reached out to touch Him gently, her fingertips softly caressing His cheek in the only place still unhurt.  In that touch, He who had felt power flow out of Him so many times to heal must also have felt power flow into Him: the power of His mother's love, a constant love that embraced the will of the Father in all its unpleasant manifestations.  So too in the meeting of their gaze must love have flowed.  In that moment, the God of the universe drew strength from His dear creation.

In our sufferings, may we look to our Blessed Mother, knowing that she longs to take away our pain and grief, but knowing also that she bears to see us suffer out of love.  She knows that what our Lord allows to happen to us out of His most abundant Providence will transform us, transfiguring the muck of our lives into a brilliant pearl to offer Him.

My most loving Jesus, by the sorrow Thou didst experience in this meeting, grant me the grace of a truly devoted love for Thy most holy Mother. And thou, my Queen, who wast overwhelmed with sorrow, obtain for me by thy intercession a continual and tender remembrance of the Passion of thy Son. I love Thee, Jesus my love; I repent of ever having offended Thee. Never permit me to offend Thee again. Grant that I may love Thee always; and then do with me what Thou wilt. (From the Stations of the Cross according to Saint Alphonsus Liguori.)