This coming Sunday, May 10, is Mother’s Day. How good it is for us to have a joyful occasion like Mother’s Day in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak that we are living through.

 

We are bombarded with bad news daily as we await the developments and the health guidance that will allow for the lifting of the numerous restrictions that have changed our lives. 

 

Nevertheless, while living through these spiritual and social challenges, we celebrate again a deep good. Motherhood. And in so doing we honor our own mothers and thank them for living out the maternal calling that they have been given by God.

 

It’s important that we rediscover the spiritual importance of motherhood and its role in the gift of the family that God has written into creation. Motherhood is indeed a vocation. It is a calling from God for which He gives the gifts of love and grace to see His plan fulfilled.

 

Our society has in some ways lessened the respect for the dignity of motherhood. Having a child is often portrayed as choice to be carefully planned, painting it as some sort of competition to the self-fulfillment achieved in work and social advancement.

 

Mother’s Day, first celebrated 106 years ago, reminds us instead of the fundamental role that motherhood plays in the lives of every one of us. Each year on this day we thank our mothers for all the myriad sacrifices and services that they have done for us over the years. We also should be thanking God for their role in our lives.

 

We can find the spiritual lessons of motherhood in the Scriptures. We sense the great responsibility for the physical and spiritual life that flows from each mother in the very first book of the Scriptures, Genesis. Even though Eve fell into sin she was given her name “because she was the mother of all the living.” (Gn 3:20).

 

We have the example of Sara, the model of mothers who have had to wait and long for God to give them a child they have hoped for (Gn 21:2). 

 

Much can be learned from Hannah about the spiritual role of a mother. She prayed tearfully before finally becoming the mother of Samuel. Having been blessed with that child she then gave him for a life of service to the Lord and rejoiced in doing so (1 Sm 1-2).

 

Of course the ultimate image of motherhood is Mary. From her we learn of God’s divine plan, and we look to all mothers as a reflection of the greatness of this calling.

 

Like the mothers of the Old Testament, Mary’s calling to motherhood is not just earthly. It is also spiritual. Of course the visit of the Archangel Gabriel was unique in salvation history. But Mary’s response, “I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word” is a reflection of maternal prayer long offered in preparation for that moment. 

 

We very much need to teach and encourage that kind of prayer to our daughters, the future mothers.

Mary knew not just the joys of bringing up a son, but also the sacrifice. She fled to Egypt and looked for the 12-year-old Jesus in sorrow. She also stood beneath His cross, always united to Him. But she knew as well the joy of Easter and her motherhood of the whole Church.

 

On Mother’s Day we stop to think of all of the sacrifices, the patience and the guidance, earthly and spiritual, that we have received from our mothers. They received us as a gift, not simply a choice. We now pray for them with deep and profound gratitude. For any of us who finally are given admittance to the heavenly kingdom, how much of that will be the influence of our earthly mothers?

 

Happy Mothers’ Day, moms!