Dear Friends in Christ:
A blessed and happy Mother’s Day to all our moms! How blessed we are because of you, your love, your care and your lives of self-sacrifice. God has blessed you in your vocation and God has blessed us through you. We thank you for your love and we thank God for you.
The month of May is specially dedicated to Our Blessed Mother, Mary. When viewing the numerous images of Mary in sacred art, one can see a tenderness, sweetness, fairness and comeliness often depicted. When reading the accounts of Mary in the holy gospels, we experience the same. As
Jesus hung dying on the cross, He thought of His mother and of us. Jesus, with Mary standing at the foot of His cross, entrusts us, His disciples, to her motherly love and care. In turn, this loving son entrusts His most beloved mother to us. He does not leave His disciples orphaned or His mother alone. In His life and in His death, Jesus makes us a family. His Father is Our Father and His mother is our mother. God the Father chose a human mother for His only begotten son and that son shares His own mother with us.
Mary is most often thought of in connection to her maternity. However, as every mother knows, there is much more to motherhood than just giving birth. Mary’s motherhood extends to her own discipleship to her son. In a wonderful way, Mary is the very first disciple as she accepted and believed in Jesus before any other human being. Mary’s motherhood is perfected in her discipleship. Her being a disciple of Jesus makes her a more loving and perfect mother! She loved Jesus as her son and as her savior. Likewise, Mary is the very first evangelist. Mary carried “The Word made flesh” in her own flesh to others – to St. Joseph, to Sts. Anne and Joachim, to Sts. Elizabeth, Zechariah and John the Baptist, to the shepherds, the Magi, Sts. Simeon and Anna and ultimately to the whole world! Mary’s motherhood and love for her son is expressed as she “proclaims the greatness of the Lord” with all her soul. Mary, experiencing the joy of Jesus in her own life, shares Jesus with the whole world and thus all generations call her “blessed”.
Like Mary, every woman who is blessed to be a mother, is a better mother when she lives her life as a disciple and evangelist of Jesus. For mothers to more perfectly and more fully love their children, they too, must love the Lord Jesus as Mary does. As every mother loves her children by caring for them, providing for them, feeding, educating and nurturing them, it is also a supreme and sublime responsibility of mothers to care for the souls of their children. Mothers show their love for their children by helping them throughout their lives to know and follow the Lord Jesus. Motherhood does not end when the child grows up or moves out of the home. A mother is always a mother. What mother would want to give birth to a child and not desire to be together with her child in heaven?
On this Mother’s Day, perhaps the greatest gift that any of us can give our own mothers, be they still with us on earth or with God in heaven, is for us to love and follow the Lord Jesus with our lives. In honoring God, we indeed honor the mother who gave birth to us and has loved us our whole lives. In being people of faith and virtue, we reflect the love that our mothers have given us and the love we have for these most wonderful and special women.
Mary, Mother of The Word Incarnate, pray for us and for our mothers that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
In Pace Christi,
Fr. Troy