Message from Parish Priest
Fr Michael Trainor
9th/10th May 2026 ~ Sixth Sunday of Easter
God as "Mother"
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
This Sunday is “Mother’s Day”—when we honour our mothers and celebrate those who nurture us. Let me share with you what I wrote last year on Mother’s Day about how we speak about God. I think it is worth repeating.
We are so used to calling God “Father” that we usually don’t give a thought to calling God “Mother”. The pronouns “he” or “his” are so prominent in our liturgical and prayer language that we think it perhaps a little blasphemous to refer to God with feminine pronouns, “she” and “hers”. However, St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) reminds us that all our language about God is metaphoric. We use human metaphors—images derived from our human experience (for, after all, this is the only language we know)—to speak about God. God is and is not at the same time. God is like a father or mother, but is not (literally) a father or mother. God is like a rock, but is not a rock.
This Mother’s Day provides us a moment to pause and think of God, metaphorically, like a mother. We have inherited a rich tradition about this that is helpful to remind ourselves about:
• The ancient Israelites had no problems with this imagery (See, for example, Isaiah 42.14; 49.15; 66.13-23; Hosea 11.3-4; 13.8; Dt 32.11-12, 18; Ps 123.2-3; 131.2) nor the Gospel writers (Mt 23.37; Lk 13.34; Lk 15.8-10).
• Early Christian writers evoked maternal imagery for God. The English mystic, Julian of Norwich (1343-1416) wrote that “God rejoices that he is our Father, and God rejoices that he is our Mother.” Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) begins a hymn he authors with “Christ, my mother….Mother, know again you dead son.”
• Pope John Paul I (1912-1978) in an Angelus address (Sept 10. 1878) famously referred to God as mother: “God is Father, and even more, He is Mother.”
• Pope John Paul II (1920-2005), reflecting on Luke’s parable of the lost son (September 1999), spoke of “The merciful father of the parable has in himself…all of the characteristics of fatherhood and motherhood. In embracing the son he shows the profile of a mother.”
• Finally, in one of his morning homilies (December, 2017), Pope Francis referred to God’s tenderness with maternal imagery: “His tenderness is this: he is a father and a mother”.
We have, then, a rich Catholic tradition that refers to God as “mother”. On this Mother’s Day, it is appropriate to think of God as our Mother.
Your brother,
Michael