Office of Communications > Weekly Reflection > May 9, 2008

I think El Greco’s painting, The Annunciation, would make a great Mother’s Day card.  The hand on the breast may be humble and accepting, but the face tells another story.  There is confusion, uncertainty, fear -- even a hint of sadness.  Perhaps she knew what happens to those favored by her God.

A mother wants the best for her child, but hers was born in the cold stench of a stable.  When she went for her post-natal purification, Simeon prophesied that her heart would be pierced.  We tend to think of the death of her son, but she knew that searing pain in his life.

At 12, he abandons his parents to teach in the Temple.  It is a precocious thing, but a boy should tell his mother where he is going. No one knows the horrors of her imagination when he is missing. 

Once, she and his brothers are waiting outside to see him, but he insists that that his mother and brothers are only those who follow the will of God.  It was a rhetorical point, but sharp enough to hurt.  And later in Luke, when a woman in the crowd blessed “the womb that carried you,” he corrects her with a blessing of the faithful instead.  A little acknowledgement would have been nice.

Long before Mary was glorified, she was a mother with all its attendant heartache and worry. It is not just gender, but gestation.  There is nothing more intimate than a woman and a child sharing one life.  She will always be conflicted, wanting to nurture and protect while wishing growth and independence.  It’s two kinds of love and the child is the winner when both are there.

I was raised by a good mother, live with one and have many more as friends.  They are very different women with different ways, but what they share is a simple presence.  Like Mary’s path from the head of a makeshift crib to the foot of a wooden cross, they may not understand, but they always abide.  That’s worth more than a day.