Mother's Day - Our Two Mothers

Happy Mother's Day!

We were all once defenseless fetuses and infants.  Without the love and care of our mothers we would either not have been born or not have survived for very long afterward.  A mother's love is a special love.  It is not equivalent to or coextensive with the care and concern of the best and kindest of caretakers, adoptive or surrogate mothers.  Such surrogates should have their day too, and their greatness recognized, but they are not mothers and they do not deserve to share in Mother's Day.  To expect or demand it would be a perversion of Nature.  Surrogate mothers have mothers too and they are at peace with themselves by equating their motherly roles with the roles of their own birth mothers?  How can that even be possible without ever carrying the child in their wombs to term?

Contradicting my foregoing point, I now claim that we have in addition to our earthly mothers, we also have a Heavenly Mother.  Her name is Mary.  She is the Immaculate Conception, the Mother of Christ.  She had not carried any of us to term in Her womb but She did carry Jesus to term and on Christmas Day Mary gave birth to the Son of God.  She was the Mother of Jesus until Good Friday, approximately 33 years later, when Christ, dying on His cross, gave His Mother to His favorite disciple John.  From that moment on, Mary, the Mother of Jesus Who is without Sin, became the Mother of all of us sinners.  This is difficult to accept for those who do not believe in Mary, the Mother of God, the mother of John and our Mother in Heaven, an extrapolation based solely on faith.

Those who believe in Mary know that She is our greatest and most effective advocate for us before Christ.  She knows Her Son.  She wants us to listen to Him and at the same time, she knows that He listens to Her.  When we pray to Mary and She prays for us, Jesus hears Her and answers Her wishes.  How effective is Mary when she prays to intercede on our behalf?  That depends on how much we love Her and Her Son.  There is a little prerequisite to loving Mary and Jesus and that is faith, complete, absolute and unyielding faith in both the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, and Her Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ.

This year, Mother's Day coincides with the Day of Ascension.  Imagine how happy Mary was when She knew that Her Son not only resurrected but also ascended into Heaven.  None of us will resurrect and ascend in the way Christ did, but all of us can make our mothers happy (we all have one) by being as Christ-like as possible so that one day we would be invited to join them both in Heaven.

And on this Mother's Day, give and show thanks to our birth mothers and our Mother in Heaven and that will be all.  It is a day off for all mothers on earth and our one Mother we share with Christ in Heaven.