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Blessed Mother, faith, grace, Hurricane Harvey, Mary, mother, mourning, Our Lady of Sorrows, pain, Syrian refugees, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, trust
Today our Church remembers Mary under the title of “Our Lady of Sorrows.” There are many feasts in our Church calendar honoring Mary but, this year especially, I find this one particularly poignant as images arise of present-day mothers. I see Syrian refugee mothers cradling their hungry and frightened toddlers, then a mother reaching out of a helicopter to fetch her child from the basket that has saved her little one as it saved her from the swirling waters of Hurricane Harvey, then a young mother at the side of her ten-year old child’s hospital bed, then a would-be mother mourning her miscarriage…
It is no wonder that mothers the world over (like my own) are known to have deep devotion to the Blessed Mother, herself unwed and a frightened teenager at the start, but one who trusted God’s grace to sustain her. In her faith she became strong enough to weather all the storms of motherhood, even to seeing her son executed in a horrible death. So many women can look to Mary to understand the pain of the various circumstances of their motherly lives.
Today I will pray for mothers young and old, happy and sad, fulfilled and unfulfilled, struggling or joyous (or both!) and ask God’s blessing on all who take on this role that they may find solace in the company of women and encouragement in the timeless witness of Mary, mother to all.