'Tis the Month of Our Mother

(Picture of the Blessed Mother in the English College at Rome)

“'Tis the month of Our Mother, the blessed and beautiful days...”

The words of this beautiful old hymn run through my mind when May 1st rolls around. I don't know what relationship you have with your earthly mother – or your birth mother, adoptive mother, stepmother, mother-in-law, or grandmother. There are many women in our lives who hold this name "mother". But they are all vastly different from the relationship we have with Our Mother, with a capital M. 

She is the one that Jesus Christ gave us in the supreme moment of His Sacrifice on Calvary. As He came close to gasping out His last Precious Breath, He said, "Behold Thy Mother." (John 19:27) In our modern-day English, He was saying, "I am giving you My Mother. She is your Mother now, too."

Sometimes our relationship with the Blessed Mother is muddied by our relationships with our earthly mothers. Did your mother scold a lot? Did she guilt you into things? Did she disapprove? Was she hard to please? Was she emotionally needy or clingy? Whatever faults or shortcomings they may have had, we pray for our mothers and the mother-figures in our lives as we obey God's Law: Honor thy father and thy mother. (Exodus 20:12)

But Our Blessed Mother was completely sinless. God made her without flaws. She was human, yes, but not in the way that we are human. She was as perfect as a human being could be...created in her sinless purity and perfection. She responded to God's grace so magnificently that she was like an immaculate mirror reflecting God's goodness, mercy and love.

When we turn to her as a Mother, she is filled with kindness and understanding. Although she is sinless and we are not, she doesn’t treat us condescendingly.

Long ago, I heard a priest on retreat say, "Our Lady doesn't ask us to win, she asks us to fight." She knows we are weak and sinful, but as long as we keep trying, she won't give up on us. Even when we are lying in the mud, in the mess of our own making, she still looks kindly on us and prays for us, like Our Lord prayed for Peter: "But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not..." (Luke 22:32) Like the true Mother she is, she reaches out a hand to help us get back on the path.

Once in the windy mountains of Colorado in winter, we went snow tubing on an isolated ranch. My toddler in her stiff snowsuit was literally blown off the road into a snowbank. I hurried after her (in my stiff blue snowsuit and clunky boots) and tried to pull her out. As she cried, “Mommy, Mommy!” I assured her everything would be okay, but the wind was so strong, all I could do was cover her with my own blue snow-suited body. I told her, “It’s going to be okay, honey. It’s going to be okay. The wind will die down and we will be able to get back on the road.” Sure enough, there came a break in the wind, and I was able to pull her out and get us both back on the road. Sometimes Our Lady covers us with the blue of her mantle and tells us, “It’s going to be okay, this won’t last. Trust me. Do whatever my Son tells you, and we will get you back on the path.”

(Picture of the Blessed Mother inside the Basilica at Lourdes)

When I visited Lourdes the first time, our pilgrimage chaplain gave us a brief talk at morning Mass. He told us to focus on "simplicity" and "confidence." After visiting the grotto where Our Lady appeared, I submerged in the miraculous spring water there, praying to Our Mother to take all of my petitions to Her Divine Son. I realized I felt "mothered" in Lourdes. I thought, "That's it. I've given my Mother my petitions, and she is going to take care of me."

After all, Our Lord told us, "Unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." (Matthew 18:3) He wants us to have the uncomplicated trustfulness toward Him, the innocence, and the simplicity of little children.

Our lives are so complicated in this modern world. Take a little time this month to sit with your Mother. Show her your petitions trustfully, simply, and ask her to present them to Her Divine Son, Who refuses her nothing.

In Paris, in a street called Rue de Bac, I've visited the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal. Here, Our Blessed Mother appeared to St. Catherine Laboure, who had lost her earthly mother when she was young. Unlike other apparitions, Our Lady sat in a chair, and let Catherine kneel beside her with her folded hands on Mary's knee. They then talked for two hours about Catherine and her own soul, her own problems, her own needs.

In later apparitions, Our Mother gave Catherine the mission to make and distribute the Miraculous Medal. But in that first one, on July 18, 1830, it was a mother/daughter chat.

The Traditional blessing of the Miraculous Medal contains these words: “Receive the holy medal, wear it with faith, and handle it with becoming devotion, so that the most holy and immaculate Queen of Heaven may protect and defend you. And as she is ever ready to renew her wondrous acts of kindness, may she obtain for you in her mercy whatsoever you humbly ask of God, so that both in life and in death you can rest securely in her motherly embrace.”

I have a lovely sterling silver rosary my mother gifted me on my wedding day. The central medal on it is a Miraculous Medal, and a priest friend bestowed the special blessing on it. When I hold it, I feel as if I’m holding my Heavenly Mother’s hand.

Dear reader - take some time this month to kneel at Mary's knee, hold her hand, and confide in her. Give her your problems, give her your cares, tell her your struggles. Ask her to give you the comfort and strength you need to become a good child of such a Mother as this.

“On this day, O Beautiful Mother, on this day, we give thee our hearts…”