Sunday, May 10, 2015

Sixth Sunday of Easter - May 10, 2015

It was all over Facebook. Soon it was on TV and was going viral on YouTube. A sixteen-year-old was dressed all in black with a hood over his face. Given the rioting and looting that was going on in Baltimore at the time, it was clear that he was intending to cause some sort of trouble. Then his mother saw him, and he never had a chance. The video of his mom cuffing him around got lots of publicity.

Today I wish every mother a happy and blessed Mothers Day. As holidays go, this one tends to be sentimental to the point of being sappy. It gives us a picture of our mothers as rocking us to sleep and softly kissing us. We may think of a mother smiling as she watches her children sweetly playing with one another and sharing their toys. Perhaps we would be wise to remember the mother in Baltimore. I don’t know what kind of mother she is in real life, and I certainly do not want to encourage the kind of language she used in the video. But she does remind us that motherhood is not easy. Mothers often have to take their children in hand, at least figuratively. Mothers, I pray that you never have to pull your children out of a riot, but you have to deal with your children’s choices, starting with the “terrible twos.”

Sometimes the difference between a mother and a child is a matter of perspective. As children, we tended to think of what I want right now or what problem is bothering me right now. Our mothers had a broader perspective of what would make us grow up to be mature, responsible – and happy in much deeper and lasting sense. Ultimately, of course, that desire is for us to be united with Christ for all eternity. The blessing for mothers at baptism, which I usually adapt for a blessing for Mothers Day at the Masses, says, “She now thanks God for the gift of her child. May she be one with him (or her) in thanking him for ever in heaven.” If we keep that goal in mind, we honor our mothers without becoming maudlin.

That goal also ties today’s feast in with our month-long celebration of the Blessed Mother. By our Catholic tradition, May is the month of Mary. Our devotions to Mary can similarly be sentimental to the point of being sappy. Granted, Mary was conceived without sin and gave birth to the perfect Son of God. But she still had to run a household and manage a family in a small village. She had to be a model of faith in a world when the Jewish people were rather downtrodden. Like any mother, she had to let her Son go His own way. Imagine how she must have felt to hear her twelve-year-old Son say, in the Temple, “I must be about My Father’s business.”

The Blessed Virgin Mary is a model for us of total trust in God’s will. When Christ, on the cross, entrusted her to St. John, he was giving her to the entire Church to be a mother to all of us. Like our mothers, she wants to help us see that God has something greater in store for each of us than the pursuits we often get caught up in. Let’s just hope that we learn that lesson without needing someone to slap us around as the mother in Baltimore did for her son.
                                                        Father H