Slow Work

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Letters to a Young Poet, mothers, patience, perseverance, prayer, Rainer Maria Rilke, St. Augustine, St. Monica, Teilhard de Chardin, the slow work of God, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Often a saint’s memorial in the Church calendar brings lots of diverse thoughts to mind. Today Christianity celebrates the feast of St. Monica whose son, St. Augustine of Hippo, had much more overt influence on Church practice than she did. Monica has special remembrance, however, in the lives of Christian mothers who trust God to hear their prayers for their children. Monica is remembered for her perseverance in prayer and thereby credited in large part with the conversion of her son. Clearly, the story of their lives is more complex than that and other influences on Augustine (e.g. St Ambrose) had a part to play. Nevertheless, Monica has been a friend of mothers down through the ages.

Today, in considering the steadfast care (sometimes seen as somewhat over-enthusiastic) of Monica for her son, I think once again of the words of Teilhard de Chardin who counseled trust in the slow work of God. Monica prayed tirelessly for Augustine’s conversion to a good, faith-filled life and was rewarded just before she died with his baptism as a Christian. Similarly, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in his Letters to a Young Poet about the need to “be patient with all that is unsolved in your life…” and “live the questions now.” Monica certainly needed that kind of advice!

Then there are the two children’s songs that help me by making me smile and hold things more lightly when I think I will never come to the end of a task that seems monumental – like clearing clutter or finishing a book I need to read. When those tasks get in the way of seeing the beauty of life I know I can sing: Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds, seems to me you’d stop and see how beautiful they are…Or maybe even better: Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow…

 

 

 

 

 

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Sorrowful Mother

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childbirth, children, dolors, Jesus, motherhood, mothers, Our Lady of Sorrows, Peace, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton

Although I have never birthed a child I have, in my years of teaching and then ministering in a parish, come to understand the joys and sorrows of motherhood. I have watched mothers love their children through celebratory days in church and school and family life. I have listened to mothers lament behaviors that they did not understand in the lives and loves of their adult children and on occasion I have suffered with them because I loved their children too. Love has a way of breaking us open both in joy and sorrow, taking us out of ourselves to a greater capacity than we could ever imagine in ourselves.

Today is the feast of Our Lady or Sorrows, formerly called by the Church “the Seven Sorrows (or Dolors) of the Blessed Mother.” No wonder so many mothers have devotion to Mary. Just think of what she went through with Jesus! I don’t often think of the everyday life of Mary: the immediate connection that she had when she first held Jesus in her arms, how she felt when he said his first word or took his first step, the pride she must have had as he grew and when she heard him preach…We only have what the gospels and Tradition have recorded for us and know few of her moments of fear for him or her intense grieving at his crucifixion. Can you even imagine her joy and the tenderness between them in their meetings after the Resurrection? There is a lot to imagine and we are able to do so because of our own experiences of such love as she had for her son.

So again today I find myself praying for mothers, in all their moments of light and dark, of peace and pressure to “give in,” in all their woe and willingness. I pray that they may know a certainty that I read this morning in a short prayer verse of Thomas Merton: O God of holiness, grant us to seek peace where it is truly found! In your will, O God, is our peace!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mary’s Birthday

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birthday, caregivers, celebration, devotion, gratitude, immaculate conception, Jerusalem, model, mothers, nativity of Blessed Virgin Mary, Nazareth, Protoevangelium of James, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

I have lots of people whose birthdays I remember and I celebrate them at least in my mind if not with a card, a call, or (these days) with an e-mail. Today Eastern and Western Catholic Churches celebrate the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary – a birthday I always mark with a smile and/or a prayer of gratitude for her role in our life. This morning I wondered who came up with this date as probably no birth certificate exists to prove her arrival and most of what we know from that time is less than an exact science. What I found was that the first written mention of Mary’s birth was in the apocryphal text called the Protoevangelium of James, a document probably in its final written form in the early second century. It speaks of her parents, Joachim – a wealthy member of one of the tribes of Israel – and Anna, but is not clear about where or when she was born. Some accounts speak of Nazareth as her birthplace and some say it was a house near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem. The date for commemoration of her birth was logically set, but not until the sixth century, as nine months after the celebratory date of the Immaculate Conception.

Regardless of historical accuracy, the Christian Churches have always celebrated Mary in many ways during the year with great devotion. She is particularly dear to mothers around the world who look to her even on the ordinary days as a model for living – in good times and times of suffering. Perhaps that is a good reminder for us today to give thanks for our own mothers and/or those who have “mothered” us with their care and love – all those who have encouraged our birthing into spiritual maturity. I will think on those women today and mark this day joyfully in celebration of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of Kings and Mothers

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birth, canticles, Christ the King, cornerstone, Eli, Elizabeth, Hannah, human, infant, leader, Luke, Mary, mothers, O Antiphons, Samuel, sons, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

A familiar adage says that “behind every good man there stands a good woman.” In today’s Scripture readings we meet two of them. Hannah was barren, longing for a child and promising God that if she finally bore a son she would dedicate him to God. Soon after, she became pregnant and bore the child, Samuel, whom we meet later with the prophet Eli. Hannah’s gratitude to God is expressed in a canticle (1 Samuel 2) that is quite similar to Mary’s song of praise (Luke 1) announcing the news of her pregnancy to Elizabeth. Both of these women bore and raised extraordinary sons – with the help of their loving husbands, to be sure. In Biblical times there was little notice given to women and little written of their steadfast care and sacrifice for their families as well as service to their God. I will take some time today to chant (even if on one steady tone) these canticles, praising God for mothers and other wonderful women.

The above reflection has merit as well in a reflection on the O Antiphon for today where we consider Jesus as “the cornerstone” of God’s house. This is the stone that joins the walls of a building at its base. It is seen metaphorically as the quality or feature upon which a particular thing (e.g. Christianity) depends or is based. As we pray the antiphon today, we might see Mary welcoming her infant son into her arms at his birth and standing behind him throughout his life as a support beam giving him the strength and courage to fulfill his mission.

O King of the Gentiles and Desired of All, You are the cornerstone that binds two into one. Come and save poor humanity whom You fashioned out of clay.

O Leader of Nations, you are the long-awaited messiah, the one like a cornerstone that joins the sides and foundation of a building. Come, make our human race all one family.

Motherly Perseverance

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balance, children, Christian love, fidelity, mothers, St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Monica, the gift of life, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Anyone who knows even a little about St. Augustine of Hippo is also most likely aware of his mother, St. Monica. Her sainthood is due to her fidelity to Christian love, as she was given in marriage to a domineering husband, a cantankerous mother-in-law and her son, all of whom were the subjects of her constant prayer. Augustine, her eldest child, led a life of debauchery until he was nearly thirty years old. At first, she would not allow Augustine to eat or sleep in the family home but after a vision in which she was told that he would return to the faith, Monica stayed close to him – even following him to Rome and to Milan in his attempts to escape her surveillance. If one can speak of “success” in such matters, Monica certainly achieved it. Augustine became a bishop and one of the most noted theologians of the early Church.

Mothers shepherd their children to adulthood in various ways great and small – worrying, praising and correcting, giving advice (welcomed or not), and, perhaps for many, praying constantly for them and placing them in God’s hands as they, themselves, prepare to leave the earth. Some of us are lucky enough to have been graced with mothers who knew the balance of all the above behaviors. Other mothers need to be forgiven for holding their children too tightly or not close enough. On this feast of St. Monica, let us give thanks for the greatest gift our mothers have given to us: the gift of life, opening to all that it can mean for our growth each day.

Of Love and Mothers

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God loves us, love, mothers, nursing home, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

I find the text for this morning’s Scripture readings quite appropriate for Mother’s Day, especially perhaps the line from the first letter of John that says, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God.” (1John 4:7) I was blessed to have a mother whose love for her children was unbounded and constant but never stifling. She was proud of us but not excessively so that we learned not to consider ourselves better than others. She taught by example. My best story about my mother is one I repeat often but no one seems to mind. It’s a very good lesson, so here it is.

At the end of her life my mother’s Alzheimer’s disease had taken her ability to speak coherently and to sing as she had – beautifully – so that she could only hum and string together very few words but her personality had never changed. She continued to be her sweet, placid self. Her last three years, when she needed more care than we could give her at home, were spent at Willow Point Nursing Home in Vestal, NY where the aides came to love her as she poured out her mother-love on them. One of her last cogent  sentences was “I love you best!” Which she often said to me when I visited almost every day. One day I arrived during lunch and the aide who was feeding her saw me and shouted from the other side of the room, “Hey, she
told me she loves ME best!” I proceeded to walk across to them, kissed my mother and said hello, to which she replied smiling, “I love you best!”

Is that not how God loves us? Each one of us is a precious, unique creation and God plays no favorites. Today is a day to honor all those people who have shown us this type of love, whether or not they are a birth mother. And for all those, like me who have never physically birthed a child, it is a call to be unconditional in our loving that the world may be transformed into a world where everyone is loved – best.