Mother's Day thoughts. . .

How strange it is that the day remains even though motherhood itself has become a less than noble calling and, perhaps, even demeaning to women.  The sad truth is that women are not really under much attack anymore.  There are very few doors that are not open to women.  In fact, we live at a time when women need nothing at all from men.  And, some women are complaining, that is what they are getting from men.

What is being attacked here is the whole idea that women need men and men need women.  While men may have lived the lie that they are somehow self-sufficient and live independently, it was always a lie.  The inconvenient truth is that men need women whether or not they acknowledge it.  What is new is that women have bought into the lie that they do not need men.  And, so it seems, they don't have many men left -- more little boys in big bodies than men willing to sacrifice, protect, provide, and serve wife, children, and home.

How sad it is that in order for any of us to have any value, we must disprove the notion that our lives are connected and we live in an interdependent relationship with our complement.  But that is where we are.  On this mother's day, we need to take some time to remember what it means for men to exclaim with Adam, at last, flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone, and for women to define love in terms of this sacrifice, protection, and provision that is a shadow of Christ's self-sacrificial love (instead of romance and self-indulgence).

There is no more noble expression of love than motherhood (and fatherhood, but that must await its own day!).  Society may not remember the value attached to those who care for, teach, and raise children into adults, but the Church must not forget this noble calling.  Careers are great and bucket lists of experiences we want to cram into our lives are okay but both of them shame and diminish us when we attach a higher value to them to the care of our children.

But what can you expect.  When abortion rights insist that what grows in a woman's womb is mere tissue that she owns and is free to do with as she pleases, how important is motherhood?  When women buy into the fact that their main value and purpose is to earn money and that value is defined by the amount of money they earn, how important is motherhood?  When children are considered an accessory and having a child an option apart from love, marriage, and calling, how important is motherhood?  When we get to the point where even women no longer honor motherhood, how can we expect men to value women and to yearn for a family?

Mother's Day is great sentiment but it is being severely tested by the realities of a culture in which the child in the womb has no legal status or protection, in which marriage is optional, in which men are not necessary, and in which equality means absolute freedom to do what anyone else does.  Where is there room left for the most noble vocation of all, the one sanctified by the angel and the will of God when He set apart a Virgin named Mary to be the mother of His one and only Son?  We may not value motherhood but God surely does and for this reason all generations shall call her blessed.  If only to remind us that being a mom is God's most noble calling.  In a month I will turn my attention to the other noble calling.  But for now, Happy Mother's Day to my mom, my wife and the mother to my children, and to my daughter-in-law soon to deliver her first born and my first grandchild.  Don't let society deprive you of the noble virtue God has assigned to you as mother!  God bless you!