A TASK OF MOTHERHOOD IS ETERNITY
Fr. IRENEUSZ SKUBIŚ
Mother, mum, mummy...There are still many other words which refer to our mother. However, these words will not be enough for the content of this holy notion which is connected with motherhood. Today we go further with our thought and heart towards her who gave birth to us, fed us and brought up us and always loved us. ‘I love you’ – these are the words, whose meaning a man learns just from mother and which we remember and pronounce from the beginning of our life. There something very natural that a man clings so strongly to his mother – after all he is connected with her from the moment of his conception. Therefore, it is said that throughout his whole life, a man feels a smell of his mother and beating of her heart. It is something most beautiful in the inner experience of a man. A strong feeling towards mother – also mother’s towards a child – it concerns not only a man still young but a man who is an adult and has his own family. We do not deprive ourselves of our love and clinging to our mother; even when a grey hair appears on our heads, when we are worried by various difficulties, when we are burdened by problems and when we are worried by illnesses – it is when we run towards our mother more, to her great and always open heart. A family home is always associated by us with the presence of mother in it, with her smile, friendliness, love and care, with her sight expressing so much, with a moment when she holds our hands in hers or when tears are flowing from her eyes. We often talk with her inside, asking for advice, reading out her wishes, asking and sharing our successes and failures with her.
There also comes time when we say farewell to our mother for good, touch her cold forehead and experience a kind of shock: she whom we breathed with like air, who always waited for us with her love – may not live any more?...
Luckily – love never ends as we read in the letter by St. Paul (1Cor 13,8) and nothing prevents us from loving our dead mothers and showing them our love through a prayer. Maybe even now we can somehow ‘make up for’ a lack of earlier shown feelings to them. We can also be sure that motherhood of our mothers does not end at the moment of their death. It has somehow a task of eternity as far as care about a child’s good is concerned.
Through the fact of motherhood, mother participates in the mystery of God creating a man under her heart according to his image. So, in the motherhood a man meets with God. Therefore apart from the perspective of eternity inscribed in the human life we can say that our life is holy because sanctified with Divine action. We also see what richness hides in the human nature that every man is different and has his inner sign, that he is unique in his nature and there is no another the same man.
So, Mother’s Day has a many-dimensions character. On this day we go to our mothers with bouquets of flowers, kiss their hands and say hearty ‘thank you’; for life and everything from the very beginning. We cannot forget about this gratitude, the natural course of events order so. Celebrating the Mother’s Day has also its educational meaning – so that a man would not forget about the most important matters.
Dear beloved Mothers. On Your Day I wish you all the best. First of all, I wish you may enjoy a beautiful development of Your children – because it is your greatest joy – observing how they are becoming more and more mature and their life – better and better and more beautiful. We also wish you – also to all of us – that motherhood may be understood and respected in our homeland and be cared for also by the state legislation. We wish that the gift of the conceived life may meet with the greatest respect; that the gift of motherhood may never be wasted and may always remain the biggest gift from God.
And I wish you, Dearest Mothers, the example of Mary, Mother of Jesus, ‘full of grace’ and ‘blessed among women’ may shine for you, always being so close to God, whose fruit of life is Jesus. I wish she may lead, give advice and bless every Polish mother.
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‘We all need mothers. We need mother’s delicacy, sensitive vigilance, presence and readiness to help. Each of us, no matter if we were knights without any taint or strong men, needs something delicate of the woman’s soul, enriched through motherhood. The stronger, more resolute and more confident a man is, it is better for him and people surrounding him, when in his psyche there is something of motherhood look of mother’s eyes...’(Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński)
(AA)
"Niedziela" 22/2012