Easter 6 - Love Your Mother

 

Homily for May 14, 2023

Sixth Sunday of Easter

Love Your Mother

 

            Today we celebrate our mothers – those women who gave birth to us and nurtured us from our youngest years. Yet did you know that we also have mothers for our souls? In particular, I am thinking of two: the Blessed Mother, and Holy Mother Church. On this Mother’s Day, I’d like to reflect on these two wonderful mothers, that we may honor them along with our actual mothers!

            First, Mary. We know she is the mother of Jesus, but why is she our mother too? Because Jesus gave Her to us! It is sometimes customary when someone is dying that they will give their most prized possessions to family members that they love most. Likewise, when Christ was dying on the Cross, He gave His most precious gift – His Mother – to us. He said to John, the Beloved Disciple, “Son, behold your mother.” In doing this, Jesus gave His mother to all disciples, including you and I! If we accept the gift, we honor the Giver, so accepting Mary into our hearts will give praise to Jesus.

            Some people wonder, though, if loving Mary means taking our attention off of Jesus. But, as St. Maximilian Kolbe said, “Never be afraid of loving the Blessed Virgin too much. You can never love her more than Jesus did.” By loving Mary, we are loving Jesus. After all, Mary said in the Gospels, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” To magnify is to take something small and hard-to-see and make it visible. God’s great works can sometimes be hidden and mysterious, but when we look at Mary, we see God’s greatest, most magnificent work – greater than the most majestic mountains or the vast ocean depths is the beautiful soul of Mary, because she alone in all of creation loved God perfectly.

            So how do we cultivate a relationship with our mother Mary? Certainly we can have statues and holy cards of our Blessed Mother in our homes. Next weekend, after the Saturday evening Mass, we will crown the statue of Our Lady with a crown of flowers, which is a sign of our love and devotion. We ought to turn to Mary frequently for graces and help in time of need, and take as our own the motto of Pope St. John Paul II – Totus Tuus Maria – Totally Yours, Jesus through Mary.

            Imagine if a poor person wanted to give a king a great gift but all he had was a few dandelions. He could take those dandelions to the queen, who would place them in a basket with roses and orchids and a rich bouquet of other flowers, and she could then present them to the king as coming from the poor man. This is what Mary does when we offer our lives to Jesus through her. In the grand scheme of this world, our lives aren’t much – sometimes damaged, definitely weak and poor – but Mary takes our lives, our sacrifices, our prayers, and surrounds them with her own perfect love to present to Jesus a beautiful bouquet, which gives Him great delight.

            Of course, perhaps the most famous way to honor Mary is through the Rosary. Did you know that the word “Rosary” means “Garden of Roses”? The story goes that a young man used to pick a bouquet of flowers for a statue of Our Lady every week. After some time, he discerned that God was calling him to enter a monastery, and he was enthusiastic to give his life to God, except for one thing: he would no longer have the freedom to bring the bouquet to Our Lady. On the night before he entered the monastery, Mary appeared to him in a dream and told him that to pray a Rosary is the same thing as bringing her the most beautiful roses. It is because of this true story that the prayer became known as the Rosary. I recommend praying it daily – I’ve been doing so for almost 25 years and it has absolutely changed my life for the better – greater peace, a closer relationship with Jesus through the eyes and Heart of Our Lady, freedom from sins…can’t go wrong with the beautiful, repetitive meditations in the Rosary!

            Mary is the perfect member of the Church, our other spiritual mother. How is the Church our mother? The Church does for our soul what our physical mothers do for our bodies. The Church gives birth to us through Baptism, feeds us in the Eucharist, teaches us through the Pope and Bishops, heals our wounds in Confession. We ought to love the Church, because Christ loves the Church and gave Himself up for Her purification.

            So how do we show honor to Holy Mother Church? First, defend the Church in conversation. Many people like to “throw shade” on the Church by bringing up the defects of its members, but no one talks smack about our mothers! We defend our earthly mothers from insults, and so we should defend the Church when others insult Her.

            Connected to that, we honor the Church by praying for Her and trying to build Her up by evangelization. The Church grows when we go out and invite others to experience Jesus. And finally, we help make the Church holy when we become holy. When we live out our vocation – whether as a priest or laity, married or single, a student or an employee or a retiree – when we live these vocations well, then the Church will become holy.

            St. Therese of Lisieux was a Carmelite nun of the nineteenth century who was having a crisis of vocation. She had a burning desire to become a martyr and shed her blood for Christ, but there weren’t too many chances of that in Catholicism-rich France. She desperately wanted to become a missionary, but her health prevented traveling overseas. So in turmoil, she turned to the Scriptures, and she noticed that St. Paul referred to the Church as the Body of Christ, and that the ear couldn’t be the hand, nor could the foot become the eye. She pondered this – yes, she had a unique calling to holiness, but what was it? She kept reading, and the next verse, from 1 Corinthians 13, began, “I shall show you a still more excellent way: love.” She realized that the Body of the Church needed a heart, and that heart was afire with love. Overjoyed that she found her vocation, she exclaimed, “In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be love, and thus I will be all things.” Without love, martyrs would shed their blood no more – missionaries would never spread the Gospel to far-flung lands. So no matter what your vocation is, living it with a burning love for Christ and love for one’s neighbor will sanctify the Church, our Mother.

            My friends, on this Mother’s Day, when we honor those women who gave us life, we also consider how we honor the mothers of our soul – Mother Mary, and Holy Mother Church. How much love we ought to give them, not only today, but every day of our lives!