Mother's Day afternoon in Philly: On a Clear Day you can see Forever. The tents in the middle distance housed the morning's activity, a regular Mother's Day Event: the Race for the Cure of Breast Cancer. My own mother loved this area of the city and grew up just a stone's throw from this beautiful setting.
Blessings today on all those of you who are mothers, including all of you women who love or support children in any way. The world should belong to you. To so many children the world is a threatening and dangerous place; but you mothers and those like you would make a different world where such children would flourish.
When I consider how I became a Jesuit and a priest, I can always point to my mother and father, both of whom were close to the church and considered, even if in a passing way, priesthood and religious life as life commitments for themselves. This Mothers’ Day I remind myself of some of the pastoral qualities of my mother. She was a woman who when she died at age 73 left ten best female friends behind. Her children always had an abundance of women that we called our aunts. My mother did not have a career as such but served for many years as a secretary in a parish church and she often told us stories of the pastoral advice that she gave to the pastor. She claimed to have kept him from making blunders with his congregation. Even today I pray for her saintly advice when facing difficult pastoral duties.
Allow me to tell my favorite story about her. My mother was born on the fourth of July in 1909. She was a Yankee Doodle Dandy. When a young mother she met another woman who was a mother of one of my sister’s playmates. In conversation these two women discovered that they were both Yankee Doodle Dandys, both born on the fourth of July. And this woman asked my mother her age. My mother thinking the other woman attractive and young looking, yielded to vanity, lied to her and trimmed three years off her age. And the other woman responded giving her own correct birth date: July 4, 1909, the exact true date of my mother’s birth. Days later my mother, wracked with guilt, admitted the truth to her new acquaintance and the two women became friends for life. My mother would tell this story to us and to her grandchildren as a lesson about the dangers of vanity and telling lies.
When I consider how I became a Jesuit and a priest, I can always point to my mother and father, both of whom were close to the church and considered, even if in a passing way, priesthood and religious life as life commitments for themselves. This Mothers’ Day I remind myself of some of the pastoral qualities of my mother. She was a woman who when she died at age 73 left ten best female friends behind. Her children always had an abundance of women that we called our aunts. My mother did not have a career as such but served for many years as a secretary in a parish church and she often told us stories of the pastoral advice that she gave to the pastor. She claimed to have kept him from making blunders with his congregation. Even today I pray for her saintly advice when facing difficult pastoral duties.
Allow me to tell my favorite story about her. My mother was born on the fourth of July in 1909. She was a Yankee Doodle Dandy. When a young mother she met another woman who was a mother of one of my sister’s playmates. In conversation these two women discovered that they were both Yankee Doodle Dandys, both born on the fourth of July. And this woman asked my mother her age. My mother thinking the other woman attractive and young looking, yielded to vanity, lied to her and trimmed three years off her age. And the other woman responded giving her own correct birth date: July 4, 1909, the exact true date of my mother’s birth. Days later my mother, wracked with guilt, admitted the truth to her new acquaintance and the two women became friends for life. My mother would tell this story to us and to her grandchildren as a lesson about the dangers of vanity and telling lies.
Our relationships with our mothers and fathers are not always perfect. We children sometimes do stupid things, rebellious things and we clash with our parents. And parents can be difficult, too. For the most part mothers are forgiving and will defend their children no matter what. And, if for some of us, the relationship with mom was or is strained, remember that God is more generous to mothers than we can ever be. And sometimes we need to rely on God’s kindly judgment on them as well as on ourselves.....
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