He said: “My mother should be heard in the totality of her messages… He who rejects her rejects Me… If this generation does not listen to My mother, it will perish.”
Isn’t that the greatest relationship of all time? That our Savior Himself should teach us how He wants His mother to be treated?
Holy Scripture speaks of Mary’s intercessory powers because He willed it. It was at her initiative that Jesus performed His first miracle: that of turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana. At the same event came her admonition that holds true for all time: “Do whatever he tells you.” What an ordinary relationship! A mother telling his followers to obey her son.
Mother Mary: the indestructible guardian of our faith, model, inspiration, beacon, guide — yet the protector of His followers. So it is that “sin came to the world by a woman (Eve) and it is by a woman (Mary) that salvation comes to the world.”
A mother was tucking in her daughter for the night; her child reached up to her for a hug.
Locked in her mother’s embrace, she whispered, “Mom? Do you love me as much as I love you?”
Her mother replied, “Only when you have a little girl of your own, and you are tucking her in at night, will you know how much I love you.”
In life, we come across numerous forms of relationships but the dearest and most heartfelt relation of all is between a mother and her child. The bond of mother and child is the purest and holiest. In her creative capacity, mother, after all, is next to God. She is a gem who forgives everything. A warm and affectionate touch from a mother gives us immense security: we feel safe and proud.
Motherhood has long been considered the embodiment of self-sacrifice, and for good reason. From the first manifestations of “morning” sickness to the sacrificial act of birthing, it consumes mothers through the physical body.
Of course, it doesn’t begin with pregnancy nor does it end after giving birth. Not at all. Every stage of a child’s life requires a different set of motherly attitudes, analyses and discernment based on her judgment.
The running joke is that the sacrifices of motherhood run so deep, they even affect her brain and she even ends up covering up for her child’s dysfunctions! “Insanity is hereditary,” goes one adage. “You inherit it from your children.” More than one mother has, at one time or another, ruefully pointed to her children as being responsible for what she considers her mental and physical a decline — hopefully, she means it in jest.
A mother’s unconditional love is tested and the hardest to forgo. Whether a child is good or bad, well or ill, smart or has special needs, the love from a mother is bountiful.
Children need a mother’s love most especially when things go wrong, whether they caused a problem or are victims of a problem. Some days they are the worst children they have ever been, yet we still can’t stop loving them!
Like Mother Mary, all mothers want their children to be protected, well-fed and well cared-for. Therefore, a mother will sacrifice everything just to see her children in good health. She will hunt down and kill the mosquito that bites her child. A mother will eat her children’s leftover food — it seems natural, after all; her children are extensions of her.
A mother will teach her children not to desire more than what is enough for them.
A mother will constantly advise her children to aspire to cleanliness, a condition that will guide them through a lifetime of respect.
The most adorable person on this earth is surely a mother. Even if you fight with her, argue with her, pour your anger on her, she will forgive — endlessly. Is there any relationship better than that which is absent of ego and hard feelings?
The challenges a mother faces regarding her children are something to worry about, and something she bears and accepts. As children grow and change, mothers have to change and grow, too, sometimes painfully. Letting children make their own choices, decisions and mistakes alone is very hard for mothers.
We sometimes ponder: “Would it be easier to understand a child growing up and changing by looking at him or her from a different viewpoint?” We mold our children into human beings we believe will make good adults, teaching them to make sound choices. However, through time this mold changes and develops into something even a mother sometimes finds hard to understand. Nevertheless, if a mother really looks hard she’ll see that her nurturing was the basis for something both expected and unexpected, heartwarming and disappointing, and a mother will accept all the blame and expect little of the praise. Yet they are hers.
The hardest task for a mother is to let children grow and go away, leaving mothers alone. Mothers tend to hold on tighter to their child when they start to drift away. This is when it is important for a mother to trust in herself. The efforts made and guidance given by a mother to her child while growing up is, we trust, the best and the most correct possible. We must believe this. So if he goes away, he’s now ready to live by himself.
If only we could hold on to our children’s tiny hands forever like that statue of Christ’s little hands pressed into Mary’s. It is a reminder for me that we mothers pave the way by disciplining our children and guiding them. We have that responsibility, as Jesus was a product of Mary’s motherhood.
He placed Himself entirely in Mother Mary’s hands for protection. Now in heaven, He has given us his mother’s hands to obtain the grace distributed by Him so that we become like her.
Trust your mother’s wisdom and depend on our universal mother, the star of the sea, earth and moon: Mary who brought the light of Christ to the darkened world. The star that leads us to the safe port of heaven.
* * *
March is National Women’s Month.