Mother is Always Right (most of the time?)--6th Sunday of Easter
Praise the Lord! The fourth commandment: Honor thy father and mother. How come this inevitably becomes more difficult as we get older? I thought it was a commandment for children, not grown adults! Apparently not, because the older I get the more difficult it is to honor my mother! The more I am told how I should live my life, the more I want to disobey! The more I discover how wrong I may have been, the more I don’t want to acknowledge how right she has been. Two examples: I was living in a huge room at Cathedral Parish this past year on my first assignment. I gutted the room and got rid of everything. I mean everything. I thought I’d live simply with a single Verlo mattress on it minus the box spring thrown on the old bare wood floor. (By the way, it was made at the store and I had them put in a Sts. Peter & Paul metal in it just for added radical Catholic asceticism.) Mom saw my living quarters and quickly shared her disapproval. A few months later, the room was renovated with a bed frame. Second, I have a website with a picture of me on it with my tongue sticking out. Mom saw this and shared her distaste for it. (no pun intended) It’s still up or in this case, still out and I have yet to decide whether or not I’ll listen to her on this one!
This being Mother’s Day, we can certainly extend our prayers of gratitude to our Mother’s for their love and dedication to teaching us the truths of life. For loving us even at times when we ourselves felt unlovable. However, the love a mother is very much like the love of our Church. In fact, we call our Catholic Church, Holy Mother Church.
Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “Whoever does not love me, does not keep my words, yet the words you hear from me are not mine, but that of the Father who sent me.” However, Jesus also says, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” We have a choice to make. We can love God by loving his Word, who is Jesus Christ. Or we can disobey God and disavow ourselves from Him by not keeping His word. Jesus has given us the Church and she is the one who perpetuates the teachings of this Word through the ages.
Jerusalem was a holy city. In the book of Revelations it says she is full of splendor, majesty, glory, radiance, like a precious stone, and as clear as crystal. Jerusalem is the city of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. It was the zenith of God’s dwelling among us on earth. Around 70 AD it was burnt to the ground and completely destroyed. However, before this, it was the place of fulfillment. No longer was God’s authority found in the Twelve Tribes of Israel, but in the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb, the twelve friends of Jesus.
It is in this context that St. Paul and Barnabas found themselves in a heated debate in the early Church about whether or not Gentiles had to be circumcised to be saved. Because a crew from Judea were going around saying that they had to be, Paul and Barnabas hightailed it to the Holy City to get the skinny on this. And what happens? They find out that indeed the Gentiles can be saved if they obey some simple commands. The way-out, left field teaching of that motley crew from Judea is proved wrong by the authority of the elders and apostles of the early Church. There is a place to get answers and it is with Holy Mother Church.
Can we not all relate with this in our own lives today? Just as we find ourselves wanting to disavow ourselves from our mother’s by taking the difficult path and learning the hard way, we do the same in our spiritual lives. We fail to go to the Holy City (today that is presently called Rome). We want to disavow ourselves from her authority and through a tremendous act of pride we isolate ourselves from our Mother, the Church. It is much the same in our lives. We do anything we can to disenfranchise ourselves from our mothers. Heck, we spend our teens and early twenties doing this! Only to find out that she was right! We discover for ourselves that she was right all along, but we were too prideful to admit her being right! We couldn’t accept the Truth that she had proclaimed to us all of those years!
That’s part of the reason I love the Catholic Church so much! She’s like a mother! She nurtures us and calls us back to herself. Her teaching is consistent and it is the Truth. I have witnessed this first hand just in eleven months of priesthood. No time is too late to accept her love! She is always waiting for us to discover for ourselves what the Truth is! Like a patient mother waiting for her son or daughter to painstakingly discover the truths for themselves, the Church longs for us to accept her Truth, which is Christ. Remember, as Christ said, “Whoever loves me will keep my word.” That word is safeguarded in the Church, she contains the fullness of that Word in her teaching.
A lot of people are speaking about other Churches like Alliance and Christ the Rock and so forth. But they are not our Mother! They do not go to the depths of a mothers love! They have swayed, like those from Judea, from authentic Christian teaching and the fullness of Her truth! And just as a mother’s love may not be conditional love all the time, she can abandon her own kin. And even our very human Church has not unconditionally loved as she ought to have. Perhaps we have been hurt by our Mother. If this hurt is deep, if we have been injured by Her, we must find a way to reconcile with Her. If we disagree with Her teaching, we must ask for God’s grace to understand Her Truth because it is not to harm us, but to bring us fulfillment!
We love God by loving his Word who is Jesus Christ, and the Church He gave to us. From Jerusalem to Jesus! From Christ to the Catholic Church! To love Christ is to love the Church—our Mother! We can only love Her if we obey Her! If we think we can pick and chose what teaching we want to follow, we are not loving Christ, we are not loving our Mother—The Church.
Happy Mother’s Day to all you out there! More importantly, Happy Mother’s Day to our Mother—the Catholic Church! I still have to decide whether or not I’ll honor my Mother—both maternal and spiritual. This is a work in progress for me as I am sure it is for all of you.
Let us bow our heads and pray:
“God our Father, if there are times we have offended our Mothers, forgive us. For the times we have been hurt by a distorted or convoluted love, we seek the grace to forgive. For the pride we’ve held onto for all these years, have mercy on us. For a lack of respect of your authority and truth in your teaching, enlighten us in your Truth. For a life of trying to separate ourselves from everything we are, help us to come back. For the times we are lost and confused, give us the grace to turn to you. Lord God, our Mother the Church has loved us and nurtured us in faith, yet so many times we have disrespected Her so disrespecting you. We have not loved you because we have not kept your Word which is Jesus Christ. Help us to love our Mother the Church because to love Her is to love You in heaven. Help us place our Mother in a seat of honor…like that of a precious stone, like jasper, clear as crystal; gleaming in your splendor. Like the Eternal Jerusalem, the Holy City, and the early Church. Amen.”
