13th / 14th May 2023 ~ 6th Sunday of Easter

 

Celebrating Our Mothers! God is Our Mother! 

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Dear Sisters and Brothers,

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This weekend we celebrate those amongst us who are mothers. It is wonderful to remember our mothers, those who have given birth to us.

It is an experience I shall never have and I know many women in our parish, for various reasons, will also not be able to celebrate being mothers. However, all of us in different ways, know the experience of “giving birth”. This is, in a symbolic and theological sense, the act of being a mother. These occur not only when women give actual birth to a beautiful child, but it also happens when we act with kindness and encouragement with others, when we accompany others, perhaps in the journey of suffering or even towards death, when we create, paint, bake, offer hospitality and show humour. All these are moments of mothering.

This image of mother is also the image of God. The prophets, especially Hosea 11.3-4, reminded his audience that God was not a male. There are other parts of the Bible where God is referred to in motherly terms. (See, for example, see Deuteronomy 32:18; Isaiah 42:14; 49:15; 66:13) So often we tend to think of God in male-only terms. However, it is important to embrace other biblical images of God. God is like a Father. But God is also like a Mother. God’s feminine qualities reflected in creation and in the conviction of God’s abiding love are very feminine features of God revealed to us in Jesus.

Pope Francis in one of his homilies at morning Mass a few years ago spoke of God’s “visceral love” and said “God’s love is like the love of a mother. He never forgets us. Never. He is faithful to his covenant. This gives us security." Pope Francis was echoing an Angelus address by an earlier Pope, John Paul I, in 1978, when he said publicly,

“God… has always his eyes open on us, even when it seems to be dark. He is our father; even more he is our mother. He does not want to hurt us, He wants only to do good to us, to all of us. If children are ill, they have additional claim to be loved by their mother.”

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This Mother’s Day becomes a time to show our deep love of our Mothers. It is also a time to pause to honour our own mothering and nurturing qualities, and to celebrate God as our Mother.

 

Your brother,

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Michael Trainor