This year’s Mother’s Day falls on 8 May. Considering the consumerist lifestyles we live, Mother’s Day offers us a splendid opportunity to revisit those values that our materialistic society can never give us, precisely because its values are worldly and therefore transitory.
This year’s Mother’s Day falls on 8 May. Considering the consumerist lifestyles we live, Mother’s Day offers us a splendid opportunity to revisit those values that our materialistic society can never give us, precisely because its values are worldly and therefore transitory. For instance, can our post-modern hedonistic secularism ever teach us to love someone unconditionally? I don’t think so. But Mother’s Day does!
As a matter of fact, the motherly instinct that nicely couches Mother’s Day celebrations presents myriad of reasons why mothers should be loved and respected. In an article entitled “10 Good Reasons to Treat Your Mom”, the author tried to list the subsequent reasons for which we need to be grateful to our mothers. “Since your childhood you have watched your mom washing and ironing your clothes, keeping your school uniform sparkling and spotless, and your jumpers without a single crease. You have been lucky enough to be picked and dropped to and from your school every single day right form your first day at school. “Whenever you had a fight and for the slightest reason or if you needed a reason to cry on someone’s shoulders, your mom was the one giving you the comfort and patiently listening to all your heartburns and grumbling.
“Just remember the innumerable times you wanted a new set of designer clothes and your mother dug out her pocket money to fulfil your wish. The food world in which you gorged ever since you were a child and grew up on, was cooked day in and day out by your beloved mother. Just think of the hundreds of incredible dishes she prepared for you, the tasty lunchboxes she fixed for you, the cakes she baked, the snacks, the cups of tea and delicious suppers. It surely makes your mouth water even now. Your mother is always there for you through every thick-and-thin of your life. She is the person you can depend upon to stand by you anytime you need her. Remember all those difficult undecided moments of life and you needed someone who could make you see reason and pour some worldly-wise advice in your ears. It was surely your mother who lent you patient ears and then pulled you out of the mess in your life. Think about the tons of love she professes for you everyday through all her acts, big and small. It can’t even be measured. It can only be felt.”
Awesome as they may sound, such reasons find their appropriate orientation if, and only if, they are linked with the spiritual aspect of motherhood. Thanks to the book of Genesis, the Bible already leads us to this profound understanding. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen 1, 27). The first thing that can be deduced from this biblical statement is that mothers are created in God’s image.
Motherhood is sacred because it comes from God himself, his very motherly spirit!
God’s Word continues to unravel the reality that mothers are the privileged representatives of God’s maternal love for his people. The prophetic literature seems to specialize in this domain. For instance, the prophet Isaiah uses the motherly love simile to portray God’s constant loving care for the people of Israel, particularly when his people might think that he forgot them! “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you” (Isa 49, 15).
In the book of Deuteronomy, Israel is likened to a son being raised by God, his loving and caring mother. The following scriptural text details the way God cared for the daily needs and the general well being of his son, Israel, as a mother would certainly do for hers. “He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions, the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no foreign god with him. He made him ride on the high places of the earth, and he ate the produce of the field; and he made him suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock. Curds from the herd, and milk from the flock, with fat of lambs and rams, herds of Bashan and goats, with the finest of the wheat − and of the blood of the grape you drank wine” (Deut 32, 10-14). No wonder one of the popular Jewish pearls of wisdom says: “God couldn’t be everywhere, so he created mothers”.
Because mothers are the tabernacles of God’s divine motherhood, the Bible demands total love and respect are to be shown towards them.
“Honour your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you” (Exod 20, 12). Since “all wisdom comes from the Lord and is with him forever” (Sir 1,1), mothers, as the privileged carriers of God’s loving presence among men, are deeply imbued with God’s wisdom. That is why their teaching is considered wise since it essentially abounds from a heart that, like that of Jesus, loves “to the end” (Jn 13,1). “My son, keep your father’s commandment, and forsake not your mother’s teaching” (Prov 6, 20). And, in Sirach’s outlook, this must be so since “the Lord honoured the father above the children, and he confirmed the right of the mother over her sons” (Sir 3,2). Again, in Sirach’s view, mothers are so precious that “whoever glorifies his mother is like one who lays up treasure” (Sir 3,4). Finally, the Bible exhorts each and every one of us “not forget the birth pangs of your mother” (Sir 7,27) and “do not despise [her] when she is old” (Prov 23,22).
As a man, and a man of the cloth, I want to make my own the memorable words of appreciation spoken on behalf of the Universal Church to every single mother, by Blessed John Paul II in his monumental letter to women he wrote on 29 June 1995. “Thank you, women who are mothers! You have sheltered human beings within yourselves in a unique experience of joy and travail. This experience makes you become God’s own smile upon the newborn child, the one who guides your child’s first steps, who helps it to grow, and who is the anchor as the child makes its way along the journey of life.”
Dear Mothers, you are truly an imperishable gift to God, the Church and the world! Happy Mother’s Day to all of you, imperishable gifts!
Mario Attard OFM Cap