Just recently, we celebrated Mother’s Day. Mothers certainly play a big influence on many of our lives.
My mother has played a significant role in my life. From those moments when I came home from school and needed someone to listen, there was my mother. From those times, I was hungry, she fed me. From those times, when I was sick, she cared for me and helped bring me back to health. My mother lived out the corporal works of mercy.
She led by example. I remember two specific instances. Once, at my eighth birthday, she invited my entire class to my birthday party. Two boys from the same family who were in my class were quite poor. They could not afford a gift. Nevertheless, my mother was most gracious to them in welcoming them and having the young men participate in the celebration. I will never forget that act of generosity. The other instance is when I talked about becoming materially wealthy as a man in high school and college, she reminded me of Jesus words, “It is easier for a camel to pass through an eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”
She was not condemning wealth, but had the wisdom to recognize the pitfalls of being sucked in and letting it possess me and forget about those in need. These are some of the ways my mother influenced to consider the call to priesthood. Hence, She was both a biological and spiritual mother to me.
Cardinal Claudio Humes from the Congregation of the Clergy spoke about spiritual maternity. First, he explained the “intention of entrusting all priests to the Blessed Mother, the model of spiritual maternity, and calls for a movement of prayer, placing 24 hour continuous Eucharistic adoration at the center so that prayer of adoration, thanksgiving, praise, petition and reparation will be raised to God-with the primary intention of awakening vocations to the priesthood.
An example was cited of some mothers in a tiny rural village of Lu in northern Italy meeting one day a week to pray in adoration for vocations in their families. Beginning in 1881, they received communion on the first Sunday of every month for that intention. By 1946, 323 vocations-152 priests and 171 nuns came from that village.” (National Catholic Register, August 24-30, 2008).
What a novel idea even for today! Imagine if a number of mothers from this diocese would come together in prayer petitioning God for priests and religious sisters from their own families! Who knows what positive fruits could be borne from this endeavor! As we celebrate the gift of motherhood this month, whether it be our own mothers and our Blessed Mother Mary, let us first of all, never forget to thank them or take them for granted, yet, also never forget the power of spiritual maternity and the great role they play in promoting vocations to the priesthood and religious life! Happy Belated Mother’s Day!
