“To be a mother is to nourish and protect true humanity and bring it to development.” (Saint Edith Stein).
I have always known – since I as a very little girl – that I would be the mother of a lot of children.
It was not something that I considered a possibility but a certainty. I played mothers and children with my little friends at school. I played families with my little dolls at home. I collected the dolls and teddy bears that belonged to my sisters, and they became my children who I played with and taught and disciplined and loved.
I am the eldest child of eight children. And I suppose that in a way I adopted as my children each of my siblings as they were brought home from the hospital. And that was very significant for me too. Because that meant that I became their biggest defenders and also their biggest pest – because I always tried to tell them what to do.
I grew up hearing that it was my job to look after my younger siblings – and I took that job very very seriously.
And I never thought that this was very strange, because to me, because being the mother-figure for my siblings was as natural to me as being their eldest sister. And it occurs to me that this was a great blessing for me. Saint Therese of Lisieux was effectively raised by her older sister, Pauline, as their mother died at a very young age, and she wrote, “The loveliest masterpiece of the heart of God is the heart of a mother.” And when she spoke of that heart, she was speaking not only of her biological mother – but also of her sister and her Heavenly Mother, the Blessed Virgin…
The Venerable Fulton Sheen wrote, “Motherhood becomes a kind of priesthood. She brings God to man by preparing the flesh in which the soul will be implanted; she brings man to God in offering the child back again to the Creator…. she is nature’s constant challenge to death, the bearer of cosmic plentitude, the herald of eternal realities, God’s great co-operator.”
And I have been reflecting on this, because I did not have as many children as I had thought I would, and I have met many women who did not have any children at all – despite all the prayers and tears and trauma… And I have been reflecting on whether this lack of biological children is a sign of the frustration of this vocation of motherhood. And I do not believe that it is. You see, Saint Edith Stein said, “To be a mother is to nourish and protect true humanity and bring it to development.”
And I have been reflecting on that today, because it seems that in essence, when I come to understand that role of motherhood, my children – my spiritual children – can number as the stars… And really, when I think about that – about all the souls that I have been called to love with a mother’s love – perhaps I have been most aptly named. For wasn’t it Sarah, wife of Abraham (after whom I was named) who was promised by God to be the mother of descendants that would number the stars in the heavens? And while that biblical Sarah was mother to her own offspring and those of her husband's other wives, I am mother to the souls who rely on my prayers...
And knowing that today, I consider my blessings as numerous as the stars…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.