Happy Mother's Day

Today is a day we should contemplate what the role of a mother is in our society.

In many ways, the world has lost sight of how important the family is and so, how important the role of Mother and Father is to the very fabric of society.

Out of necessity, really, we have tried to set up 'as close as' to what we really need:  a strong, solid family structure established to create, nurture and educate children.

I use the phrase 'out of necessity' because it seems to me that, in the past 60 years we as a group have really dropped the ball.  Because of the abuses of both institutions and individuals, thinkers tried to recreate the family.

Think about it - if you, as a woman, was raised to believe that your husband would love you, honor you, protect you and provide for you and instead you find yourself married to an alcoholic drug abuser, a physically and verbally violent man who squanders the family funds and turns outside of the covenant of marriage for sexual pleasure you are going to become pretty darn disillusioned about the whole idea of marriage.

And if you, as a man, was raised to believe that your wife would love you, honor you, respect your efforts to do your job, put you and your children first before her own needs and be the very heart of your family unit and instead you discover that you have a vain, childish, demanding, selfish, drug addicted alcoholic in your bed you might start to think someone handed you a bill of goods when it comes to marriage.

Add to that a cultural 'revoltion' that reduces sex to something done for fun, women to receptacles and objects of pleasure and fosters a mindset of 'but she/he wanted it' to OK the abuse of minors and you have our society today.

Unlike many people, however, I don't think we are hopeless; rather, I am witnessing a resurgence of values among people younger than I who are rejecting the idiocy of my generation.

Oh sure, there are those who are holding fast to outdated idea of freedom.  They sound pathetic but by golly they are holding fast to it because after all it is all they have to ground them in their failing theology or reality.  A notoriously anti-Catholic man publically refers to Blessed Teresa of Calcutta as 'anti-choce' and 'anti-feminism' while still calling himself a Christian.  A young woman posts her abortion procedure on You Tube while stating she wants to take the sting of it away for other women - while being very careful to not show the results of the abortion because that would be 'too graphic'.

Their lack of logic, their self hatred, their rejection of all that is truly holy is nothing to be angry about; rather it is something that should cause us to weep. It should drive us to pray and beg God to forgive them for they know not what they do.  They think they are crusaders for freedom.  What they do not know is that they are wracked with anger and grief - and they dishonor the Creator by their words and their actions.  They dishonor their own mothers and, in doing so, spit in Jesus' eyes much like the Roman soldiers 2 thousand years ago.

Today, on a day we honor mothers, I think of my children praying for me in heaven and I rejoice.  I rejoice not because I caused four of their deaths and then had to witness the death of the one that would be my savior.  I rejoice because God has given me the chance to redo my life and be a part of the resurgence of Love within my community.  He has allowed me to express my motherhood in ways I would not have been able to do if my children had lived.  He has allowed me not to hate those who hate me and my kind but to view them with compassion.  He has allowed me to be the mother I could not be in my youth to many who, because of the folly of mankind, never had a chance to have a mother.

I honor my mother today because she rejected what society told her almost 60 years ago and, instead, sacrificed herself for her son and her daughter.  We were raised in the Faith, given a first rate education, denied little and brought up with discipline and love.  Our failure to live lives of honor do not reflect upon her.  My return to The Truth is a result of her prayers.  She is a powerful prayer warrior and has taught me to pick up the lance and shield of that role and not give up.

I honor my heavenly mother, The Blessed Virgin Mary, today too.  She has taught me how to suffer with dignity and to use that suffering to the advantage of God.  She has shown me how to love those who hate me because she loves those who hate her.

I am grateful to the role of motherhood today.  Thank you, Lord, for all you have given me, for all You have allowed me to lose and for all You have helped me regain.