Motherhood in the Scriptures

Homily for May 10, 2015 (6th Sunday of Easter; Mothers’ Day—USA)

Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48; Psalm 98; 1 John 4:7-10; John 15:9-17

How many moments of joy announce themselves with nausea and vomiting?  Welcome to motherhood…or at least the beginning of it! As any mother will tell you, there’s more “fun” ahead:  the weight gain with its associated aches and pains, bladder pressure, shortness of breath, higher blood pressure, fatigue, irritability….and we haven’t gotten to labor and delivery!  Moms, did I forget anything?

In the Church we speak a lot of God as Father, and it is fitting that we do so.  After all, in the gospels and particularly the Gospel of John, Jesus himself speaks of and even addresses God in that way.  When the disciples asked Jesus how they were to pray, he gave them what we now know as the Lord’s Prayer or Our Father.  According to Tradition, the persons of the Holy Trinity were revealed as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

But on this day of all days, we would be remiss if we failed to remember that the scriptures, especially in the writings of the prophets, also use the image of motherhood to describe God’s love, devotion and care.  In Isaiah 66:13, for example, God promises to comfort Israel returning from exile just like a mother comforts her child.  Isaiah 42:14 describes God like a woman in labor, gasping and panting, ready to deliver judgment and ultimately salvation.  

Even without explicitly referring to it, today’s readings remind us of the motherhood of God.  Beginning with pregnancy, motherhood is a vocation that defines what it means to give of oneself.  Moms nurture their children from their very bodies, first in the womb and then at the breast.  However much we may love our mothers, we know that they loved us first.  Similarly, no matter how deeply we love God and dedicate ourselves to God’s people, St. John tells us that God loved us first by sending us Jesus as the saving embodiment of that love. 

As he prepared to leave his disciples in his ultimate act of love on the cross, Jesus echoed that same generosity and grace when he told them:  “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain.”  To be a follower of Jesus, then, is to be a mother—one who bears him and brings him to birth in the world.  As St. Gregory the Great said, "The proof of love is in the works. Where love exists, it works great things. But when it ceases to act, it ceases to exist."

Though he was challenged by his own background and bias against gentiles, St. Peter served as a spiritual mother or midwife for Cornelius, his household and a host of others after he witnessed that “God shows no partiality” in sharing the gifts of grace, the Holy Spirit and the invitation to life in Christ.  Peter would later come to their defense as what we have come to know as the Council of Jerusalem debated and decided how much of the Mosaic law people needed to observe in order to be part of the church.

More than ever, the Church needs her members to be like mothers—bearing Christ and bringing him to birth in a world that needs his light.  Today, we thank all those who have accepted the vocation of motherhood and who daily demonstrate the loving care, wisdom, discipline, and above all the self-emptying spirit that are at the heart of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, who learned how to love from his mother, Mary.  She is our mother, too.  +