Mother's love

The other day I listened to an audio sancta sermon from the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, (http://www.romans10seventeen.org/audio-files/20140202-That-Out-of-Many-Hearts-Thoughts-May-Be-Revealed.mp3,) and it occurred to me that God was again clearly pointing me in the direction which he has been directing me my whole life. Sadly it has taken me most of my life to be able to finally recognize, sometimes, his encouraging push. The essence of the sermon was on God's infinite love for us and how it is reflective in the maternal love of Mary and to a more imperfect degree in the maternity gifted to every woman.


As I listened I realized again what an honour I have been given to be able to mother our children. Being a mother has meant more to me than anything I have ever undertook, second only to being a wife.

In his sermon Father was saying that each of us is hard wired to need to be mothered. This resonated with me because of the belief that each of us is created to yearn for God's love. This need is imprinted on our souls from conception and we spend our earthly lives trying to fill this yearning. Alas those who reject God's love, because they are created to love him and be loved by him, find far less satisfying means of answering this yearning. Father quotes from Dom Columbia Marmion on the nature of motherly love.

"God is Love, and so that we may have some idea of his love he gives a share of it to mothers. The heart of mother was her unwearying tendingness, the constancy of her care, the inexhaustible delicacy of her affection, is a truly divine creation. Although God has placed in her only a spark of love for us. Yet however imperfectly a mother's heart reflects the divine love towards us God gives us our mothers to take his place in some manner with us. He places them at our side from our cradles to guide us, to guard us, especially in our earliest years when we have so much need of tenderness."

The words struck me so deeply. Mothering, if we are willing to accept for a moment that the above reflects some truth, is not the act of feeding, diaper changing, bathing, cuddling the sick, scolding the wayward in and of themselves. Mothering rather is that disposition which informs all the above, which drives those acts. Mothering therefore can not be replaced by daycare as so many have come to believe. One might argue that the very notion of daycare is so counter family as to be communistic in nature. Is it a coincidence that daycare came from communist/socialist ideologies. Ideologies which by the way deny the existence of God. Mothering is that spirit of deep sacrificial nurturing that comes from a heart filled with a will to give so completely of self that it informs all other decisions. That spirit that allows us to overcome some of the most heart wrenching pain and torment because God has placed in our care people who's needs have become paramount in our lives and to put ourselves first would mean giving them less than what they must have.

I realize that there are situations where a woman has no choice but to go out into the workforce, where she must set aside her maternity for a chunk of time in the day to take on what had traditionally been a paternal role.  But out of need or choice there is still left the question as to what happens to those who are not given that which they have been created needing?

Let us say that we have been hard wired with an innate need to be mothered, not part time when it is convenient for the motherer, but full time at the expense of the motherer's perceived needs and desires. If this is true what does that mean for the billions of us who's mothers have been sold on the idea that there is no need of sacrifice in mothering? That mothering can be a part-time job shared with a career? That the "constancy of her care" need not be quite so constant? Would this not reflect on the generation preceeding this shift? Is it any wonder that we now live in a culture of "me firstism?" That sacrifice, dedication to others at the expense of self, is considered neglectful and counter-productive on our supposed role of self-fulfillment? How often have we heard the statement, "how can I make others happy and give to them when I am unhappy and do no have what I need/want?" How many have left families and marriages citing some form of the above position?

And then what happens to our understanding of God? If mothers are meant to be a reflection of God's love for us, from whom we first learn about what the true meaning of love, then what happens to a world in which that love is not properly presented or nurtured. Well we are living what happens. Over 50% of marriages do not last. In all honesty I do not know the numbers but fewer mothers than at any other time in history stay home full time. The very notion of family has become some relative idea that anyone can define to mean just about anything. Babies are murdered daily by the very person who was put on this earth to protect and care for them. Men are left wondering where they fit in a world where they really aren't needed anymore because women can now do it all. And throughout the western world God has been exiled from our lives.

I am so thankful that God has opened my ears to be able to no hear now and again his call to me to embrace motherhood, not as a burden that I must survive, or a task I must perform and compensate for it by finding a "fulfilling career," but abandoning myself to the beauty of motherhood. I am a sinner and so I do have my far too many moments of selfish rejection of what mother needs to be. I have my moments of wanting "me time," knowing that other's needs come first and I tend to their needs not wholeheartedly but grudgingly. But I hope that those moments are fewer than they were, and I hope that despite those moments my children have gotten some sense or experience, some minuscule taste of God's divine love for us. And so I continue asking him for the Grace to be a better mother, that my children will, with his Mercy, know even a glimmer of his Love through me as his instrument.

Y que Dios sintiendose triste
Y en eternas soledades
para ser más DIOS que nunca,
quizo tener una MADRE…

(And God feeling so sad
in his eternal solitude
to be God more than ever
needed himself a mother)

Author unknown

Pax Christi