Reflection for Mothering Sunday, 2021.

Back in the mid-90s when I was at University (the same University and College Fr Peter attended, though not at the same time as me!) I had a fridge magnet that said ‘Call your mother, she worries’. I cannot admit to honouring that call assiduously, but it is a reminder that the responsibility of parenthood extends beyond childhood. Our parents never stop being our parents, even when we are adults, which is why it can be such a profound shift when our parents die, and we in effect become orphans.

 

Mary the mother of Jesus is told from the beginning that her son is to be special, the ‘Son of the most high God’ as the angel puts it in the Annunciation. Agéd Simeon the priest who blesses the infant Jesus confirms that call: he will be someone who changes the world around him. But that will come at a great cost to you Mary, and to him. For you it will mean your very heart being pierced with grief; for him it will mean submitting to death on the cross.

 

At around the same time, in another part of the country another mother gives birth to another child. This child will be no less remembered that the son of Mary, but for all the wrong reasons. His name is Judas, and he will be the one in whom all the opposing mentioned by Simeon will be focused. He will betray Mary’s son, and will ensure that his persecutors are able to capture, taunt, try and execute him.

 

Later on in the gospels a group of mothers will gather at Golgotha, at the foot of the cross of Jesus, along with his beloved disciple John. In another part of the country another mother will hear of her son’s death. His death will have been a lonely one, undertaken at his own hand, and there was no one to comfort him. In a piece of artwork, a copy of which I have added to my blog, there is an image of these two women: the Blessed Virgin and the mother of Judas comforting one another. In the background there are silhouettes of a hanged man and a crucified man, which remind us that the experience of grief and loss is universal. That no parent should have to see the death of their child.

The Mothers of Jesus and Judas 

Nicholas Mynheer

 

Mary is the mother of Jesus, and during her life her heart will be pierced on many occasions. First with the death of her husband St Joseph, then with the events that surround Jesus’s arrest and death. Yet she will remain faithfully at Christ’s side, both at the Crucifixion, but also with the early Church, and she will be present at Pentecost, where in Eastern iconography she is depicted along with the disciples receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit in the form of tongues of living flame. And following her Assumption she remain at his side enthroned next to Jesus as Queen of Heaven and the Angels.

 

If Mary is the mother of Jesus, then she is also the Mother of the Church and of Priests. In the alternative reading set for today (John 19.25b-27) we find Mary at the foot of the cross, where Jesus entrusts her to St John’s care and her to his. At this moment Mary becomes the mother of the church, as the disciples represent the Church in embryo, and which will be born on Pentecost Sunday. Here she is entrusted to the Church, and the Church is entrusted to her care, which is why when we pray that we ask for her intercessions.

 

Similarly, our parents continue to care for and to pray for us, and we pray for them and for our own families and children if we have them. We share in that responsibility of care for them with God and the angels, each of us taking our own part, each of us complementing the other. That responsibility can take many forms, one of which might be worrying about the welfare of those whom we love, because each of us holds within ourselves the power to pierce the very hearts of those whom we love.

 

So, this Mothering Sunday let us celebrate the gift of our mothers, of those who have been mothers to us, and to the motherhood of the Church and the Blessed Virgin who is mother of us all. And let us ask for her intercessions for those whom we love, for the Church and for ourselves, that we might bear and share Christ’s love with the world.

 

Fr Matt