Dear Readers,

The date for this article doesn’t match our calendars, but the thoughts remain valid today, for This Mother’s Day, the war in Iraq is still spreading fear and heartache around the globe. Grieving mothers, wives, children, young men and women on the battlefield, are still saddened and angry to see their country’s honor in shambles. Can we still pray with the psalmist’s exhuberant, unrestricted joy?

For see, winter is past,
The rains are over and gone,
The flowers appear on the earth
The season of glad songs has come.

Song of Songs 2:10-11

Christ quietly walks with us, prays the psalm, understanding that our “winter” is not past, but telling us He will be with us to await a spring when there will be no more tears or sorrow.

Meanwhile, we can be still and allow our eyes and hearts to drink in the beauty surrounding us, that we might not become bent-over people, unable to stand tall with courage and hope and trust.

Months ago, who would have thought that our frozen earth could yield wild roses on road sides and the fragrance of lilacs in the air?

How fitting that Mother’s Day arrives in May, Mary’s month, when children in one parish after another still crown her statue with flowers and sing her hymns while walking in procession.

Recently, a woman whose daughter is to be married in a distant city, called to say that it will not be possible for the bride to leave her bouquet at Mary’s statue because the pastor said, “We don’t worship Mary, and such a gesture would have no meaning.”

To him, it might carry no meaning, but to the bride, it would have enveloped many of her hopes of creating a loving home for her husband and future children.

Those priests, and, thankfully, their number is small, who would label such devotion to Mary as sentimental, probably have never tried to imagine what it is like to sit up night after night with a sick child, or husband, or parent, or wonder if there will be enough money for milk if the pension check doesn’t arrive on time.

Neither would such a priest understand a young mother’s loneliness from being with a two-year-old day after day, whose conversation is limited to: “dog,” “cat,” “ball,” and “NO!”

Mary, blessed with extraordinary sensitivity, would have known loneliness, as well. Were the neighborhood women jealous of her beauty, her perfectly obedient Child, her loving husband? Did they pass the time at the well with gossip that left her feeling as though she would never fit into their world? We don’t know. We know only of her great love from the way she lived.

It seems to me that the men who crossed her path would have adopted a protective way with her, not wanting someone so lovely and so good to be harmed.

I wonder if the Catholics, who find May Crownings sentimental, would have agreed with a reader of this site, who took me to task for writing about the priests and bishops who rape women in Africa. My only response is to say a prayer for them, for anyone, priest or layman, who could be so indifferent to the plight of those religious, may be old enough to be a man, but he is not man enough to be a man.

Happy, blessed Mother’s Day to all mothers, and every woman who cares for the needy of any age is a mother to God’s own.

Peace. Joy. And hope to all of you. Be with God.

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