Pentecost Sunday

Mother’s Day

May 11, 2008

In all my almost 38 years of priesthood there has never been a time when Pentecost and Mother’s Day fell on the same day. I am sure it will not happen again for many decades. Pentecost is the third greatest festival of the Church, next only to Christmas and Easter. Mother’s Day stands out as one of the greatest holidays of the year. They say that this weekend is always the busiest calling day of the year. More telephone calls are made today than on any other day of the year.

I would enjoy preaching a happy little sermon today on all the joys of the Church and of Motherhood. Instead, I think it is more to the heart of things if we talk about our complicated joy.

The Church has certainly received its hard knocks recently and throughout history. Motherhood is and never has been without great suffering, pain, and contradiction.

There are mothers who don’t want to be mothers, and others who want to be and can’t. There are single mothers, mothers who are abused, abandoned, poor, broken, addicted, and left out. There are mothers of aborted children, of rebellious and ungrateful children. And there are mothers of children who have died.

The Church has gone through heresies, pedophiles, persecutions and dark ages. But for both the Church, which is comprised of us all, and for all mothers, today is our day of complicated joy.

We must honor those to whom honor is due. This is a time of unabashed joy. Let us celebrate motherhood, let us celebrate the Church without apology, without hesitation. Our children must know that, even though they find themselves in a troubled world, that there is joy to cherish and to look forward to.

Even those, especially those, scandalized by the Church or disillusioned with Motherhood, this is a time to refocus. Those who are broken need to share the blessings and gratitude with those who rejoice. In doing so it can be the first step to hope, and then to unfettered joy.

For those who do not feel broken but indeed rejoice in life, in the spirit, and in today, we must rejoice, because a joy filled person stands to lose their joy if they forget what inspired it in the first place.

God is the cause of our joy, complicated or not. It is because the Spirit of God is in us that we live. It is because of God that we have our Mother. It is because of God that we have Mothers Day and Pentecost, birthdays and graduations. It is because of God that we rejoice. It is the birthday of the Church.

Spirit who hovers over the waters,

Calm our disturbances,

The troubled waves, the clamor of words,

The whirlwinds of vanity

And in the silence raise up

The Word that recreates us

Spirit of fire, always hidden

In your origin, by your flame,

Come and consume the chaff in us;

To the foundations of our lives,

Come thrust like a sword

The Word that sanctifies.

Spirit who breathes in a whisper

To our spirit the name of the Father,

Come gather all our desires,

Make them rise like an army

That answers to the light,

Spirit of God, sap of love

Of the huge tree whereon you graft us

May all those around us

Appear to us as a gift

In the great body

Where the Word of Communion

Is the culminated.

(Commission Francophone Cistercienne. Paris. 1973)