Loving Our Mothers

Mother’s Day gives us time to reflect on the great grace of Motherhood, without which none of us would be here. Mothers are gifts from God and are tied to marriage and family to image the Trinity. God fashioned marriage and the family to reveal something about His own inner life. Jesus and the Father share everything by self-gift, which eternally fosters the Holy Spirit of life-giving love. In like fashion, a husband and wife, share themselves through self-gift, fostering the gift of life with their love. Mother’s, in a special way, enjoy the role of carrying and bearing life from within. As St. John Paul II stated, “Motherhood involves a special communion with the mystery of life, as it develops in the mother’s womb. The mother is filled with wonder at this mystery of life, and ‘understands’ with unique intuition what is happening inside her. In the light of the ‘beginning’, the mother accepts and loves as a person the child she is carrying in her womb. This unique contact with the new human being developing within her gives rise to an attitude towards human beings – not only towards her own child, but every human being – which profoundly marks the woman’s personality” (Mulieris Dignitatem, #18).