Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers of the parish and the mothers of all our parishioners! We all know how important our mothers have been to us as we grew up and so we join with our nation in honoring them today. And, during this ongoing coronavirus pandemic, we become even more aware of the essential role mothers play in our homes in ways that we may have taken for granted in the past.
Mother’s Day has a very long history; allow me to offer a little background. The earliest tributes to mothers dates back to the annual spring festival that the ancient Greeks dedicated to Rhea; their religion considered Rhea to be the mother of many of their gods and goddesses. The ancient Romans had a spring festival dedicated to Cybele, the mother of their gods. Early Christians transformed this pagan celebration into an opportunity to honor Mary, the mother of Jesus; this was first done on the fourth Sunday of Lent. In England, this holiday was expanded to include all mothers and is still called Mothering Day. In the United States, the Mother’s Day that we celebrate today has its roots in the efforts of Anna Jarvis, an Appalachian homemaker, who organized a day 150 years ago to raise awareness of poor health conditions in her community. She called it “Mother’s Work Day.”
When Anna died in 1905, her daughter, also named Anna, began a campaign to memorialize the life and work of her mother. She lobbied prominent businessmen like John Wannamaker and politicians including Presidents Taft and Roosevelt to support her efforts to create a special day to honor mothers. At one of her first services organized at her church in West Virginia in 1908, Anna handed out her mother’s favorite flower, the white carnation. Five years later, the House of Representatives adopted a resolution calling for officials of the federal government to wear white carnations on Mother’s Day. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill recognizing Mother’s Day as a national holiday. Our parish’s Respect Life Committee ordinarily hands out carnations after all of the Masses on Mother’s Day. This year, however, they are working together with our Youth Group to collect funds to support Mother’s Home, located in Darby, PA, that offers mothers and their children assistance before, during and after a crisis pregnancy. Please be generous with your offering in the oversized baby bottles that members of our Youth Group and their families will have available after all of the Masses this weekend.
Mother’s Day is not part of the Church’s liturgical calendar. In fact, liturgical directives state that “this secular observance must in no way diminish the primary focus of Sunday as the celebration of the paschal mystery.” Yet, this national holiday allows an opportunity to reflect on the essential role of a mother in everyone’s life, so allow me to offer some food for thought. Every human being has a mother. No one is born except through a mother’s nurturing and labor. Even Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, had a mother. In fact, as Saint John Paul II wrote so eloquently in his apostolic exhortation, The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World, “God then manifests the dignity of women in the highest form possible, by assuming human flesh from the Virgin Mary, whom the Church honors as the Mother of God” (§ 22). He went on to say that:
There is no doubt that the equal dignity and responsibility of men and women fully justifies women’s access to public functions. On the other hand, the true advancement of women requires that clear recognition be given to the value of their maternal and family role, by comparison with all other public roles and all other professions. Furthermore, these roles and professions should be harmoniously combined, if we wish the evolution of society and culture to be truly and fully human. …Therefore, the Church can and should help modern society by tirelessly insisting that the work of women in the home be recognized and respected by all in its irreplaceable value (§ 23).
Yes, women, and mothers in particular, play an irreplaceable role our lives. I’m delighted to see a return to the respect that stay-at-home mothers are enjoying once again in our society. Although their presence in the workforce is also very helpful to society at large, their work at home is of such great value that no one else can ordinarily do it as well. Let us take time today to honor our mothers, thanking them for their many sacrifices as they have brought us into the world and cared and nurtured us throughout our lives! As we celebrate Mother’s Day this year, let us thank God for giving them the sacred vocation of motherhood, through which all of us have come to life.
CONGRATULATIONS FIRST COMMUNION CLASS!
Last weekend and this weekend, 64 of our parishioners have received or will receive our Lord in Holy Communion for the first time! This is a very important event in their faith lives as they now join with the rest of the believing community in participating fully in the Celebration of the Eucharist. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains so clearly, Holy Communion is “our fellowship with Jesus and other baptized Christians in the Church, which has its source and summit in the celebration of the Eucharist. In this sense, Church as communion is the deepest vocation of the Church” (p. 871).
According to the Catechism, the “Mass is at the same time, and inseparably, the sacrificial memorial in which the sacrifice of the cross is perpetuated and the sacred banquet of communion with the Lord’s body and blood” (§ 1382). As we celebrated a few weeks ago during the Easter Triduum, our Lord offered his sacred Body and Blood to us when he instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper and then He offered His life for us to our Heavenly Father on the cross. The Eucharistic celebration involves us in both of these mysteries through which we are able to offer to God the only gift worthy of Himself – that is, Himself – as the Son of God offers Himself to God the Father. At the same time, we are invited into the heavenly banquet at which Christ offers us Himself for our spiritual nourishment. The Catechism explains:
The altar, around which the Church is gathered in the celebration of the Eucharist, represents the two aspects of the same mystery: the altar of sacrifice and the table of the Lord. This is all the more so since the Christian altar is the symbol of Christ himself, present in the midst of the assembly of his faithful, both as the victim offered for our reconciliation and as food from heaven who is giving himself to us” (§ 1383).
It is so important for us to receive our Lord in Holy Communion. The Catechism continues, “The Lord addresses an invitation to us, urging us to receive him in the sacrament of the Eucharist: ‘Truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you’” (§ 1384).
It is also important for us to receive the Eucharist worthily: “To respond to this invitation we must prepare ourselves for so great and so holy a moment. St. Paul urges us to examine our conscience: ‘whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord’” (§ 1385).
Worthy reception of our Lord in the Eucharist brings us into union with Christ and his Body, the Church: “Those who receive the Eucharist are united more closely to Christ. Through it, Christ unites them to all the faithful in one body – the Church. Communion renews, strengthens, and deepens this incorporation into the Church, already achieved by Baptism. …‘The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread’” (§ 1396).
There are so many layers involved in this sacred act that we do well to reflect on them often and receive our Lord frequently with gratitude and joy. Again, congratulation to our First Holy Communicants!