Dear Friends,
Today we take time to offer special honor to mothers on this Mother’s Day weekend.
The month of May invites us to dwell on the feminine genius. This genius was made visible in particular in Mother Mary. Her feminine genius is seen in how she collaborated with God to bring forth her Son Jesus Christ into the world and to raise and support him in life, in death, and through the new life of the Spirit.
What is the feminine genius?
It is the unique capacity women have to uphold the primacy of love in human life. Written into a woman’s physiology, even if she never physically carries a child, is “room for another” and an innate sensitivity to the goodness of the human person. Man, John Paul II taught, always stands in some sense outside the life process, learning a significant part of his role as son, husband, and father from woman. Woman, then, has a great service to render humanity as custodian of the person and of the family— some women as literal mothers, and all women as spiritual mothers, by seeing persons from the heart and bringing the truth about the human person to the fore wherever they work and serve.
The month of May also affords us an opportunity to think of our own mother’s feminine genius, how this is revealed in the way they bring us into the world, care for us along our journey, and nurture our growth. On this Mother’s Day, let us honor our mothers, living or deceased.
It is very difficult to understand what a mother goes through in her heart as she struggles to keep everyone in the family together and focused on the life to be lived. It breaks my heart to know that there are many mothers who are neglected and unappreciated and simply ignored by their own children. This must be like a sword piercing their hearts each time it happens. Have you felt your mother’s heart as it beat for you every moment of her life? A mother’s tender and compassionate love for her children are indeed a reflection of Christ's sacrificial love for each one of us.
Let us not only think of our mothers but honor them some way this month. If you have not spoken to your mother in a while, for whatever reason, please stop everything you are doing, pick up your phone, and call her or visit her or do something to show that you care for her. “A mother is the only person to have felt your heartbeat from inside, who has a love that is unbreakable, and who is your friend for life.” Thank you, Mothers, for your love and, most especially, for passing on your faith to your children.
We also say a big thanks to our Church for being acutely motherly in the way she accompanies us from birth until death and paves the way for our forever life with God.
In addition, we take this day to think of, thank, and honor all the special woman in our lives with the gift of prayer.
On behalf of Fr. Vincent, the Deacons, and the Staff, I wish you our mothers A Very Happy Mother’s Day!
On the 6th Sunday of Easter, we continue to reflect on readings from the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. We hear how the disciples are busy spreading the good news of Jesus Christ. Philip has done a great ministry in Samaria, and Peter and John are sent as a reinforcement to strengthen those who had been baptized by Philip by laying their hands on them. There is a great joy when the people accept Jesus.
St. Peter in his first letter says something spectacular about what accepting Jesus does to us. We are filled with hope. We do not live like before, without hope. This is Peter’s famous statement: “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope.” How lovely it would be if people noticed the gift of hope in our lives. Are we people who bring hope to others? Pope Benedict XVI, in his masterpiece Spe
Salvi (2 ), describes those who live in hope: “The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.”
Every Christian receives the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity at Baptism. Hope is rooted in these truths:
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- Our Creator loved us into being — God first loved us (1 John 4:19)
- He continually sustains us by His love — God is love (1 John 4:8)
- By His death and resurrection, we have been saved and restored to God’s friendship — For God so loved the world (John 3:16-17).
The Constitutions of the Congregation of Holy Cross boldly and eloquently invite the men of Holy Cross to be men with hope to bring. Jesus, in the Gospel of John (14: 21), gives us a clue as to what could give us this hope. He asserts: “whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him." If we live in intimate relationship with the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit will fill us with hope.
I pray that all of you will be filled with that priceless hope, so that you may spread the Good News that Jesus is Risen!
Have a Blessed Week!
With love,
Fr. John