Mother’s Day and the dignity of women
During the month of May, which is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, we also celebrate one of the most loved days of the year: Mother’s Day. This holiday, created and promoted by a woman with deep Christian roots in the United States, is one of the deepest tributes we can pay not only to mothers, to our mothers, but to all women.
Our beloved servant of God John Paul II in his letter about the dignity of women, explained in a very clear way how the life of Mary can shed light upon the lives of all women: “virginity and motherhood co-exist in her: they do not mutually exclude each other or place limits on each other. Indeed, the person of the Mother of God helps everyone — especially women — to see how these two dimensions, these two paths in the vocation of women as persons, explain and complete each other.” (Mulieris dignitatem, 17)
Obviously, the most natural and customary way of expressing this vocation of every woman is physical motherhood; that which ensures the existence of the human race and which is the immediate cause of our existence; but it is not the only way.
In fact, the Church has also seen in sacred virginity, manifested in so many varied religious families and charisms, a way to manifest the supreme model of woman, holy Mary, who was both Virgin and Mother; and who therefore embodied in her life the fullness of motherhood.
Mother’s Day is an occasion, therefore, to give thanks to God for having given us the mother who brought us to life and who taught us to love him; and to give thanks to our mothers for all they have done for us, especially for those things we were never aware of: their sleepless nights while we slept, their efforts while we were sick, their efforts to give us their own gifts that we often received absent-mindedly and without thanking them.
But this celebration is also a chance to promote that “new feminism” proclaimed by Pope John Paul II, acknowledging the dignity of women and the valuable contribution that the “feminine genius” — as the memorable pope called it — brings to the family, the community and society.
We should remember that, unlike a certain feminism, which is starting to go out of style, not without having caused serious cultural damage, we Catholics recognize the historic value of women in the life of the church and society as a good that is complementary to the mission of men, and not in opposition to them.
The pope’s preacher, P. Raniero Cantalamessa, during last Holy Week, said that the Lord’s Passion leads today’s world to recall the role of women, “who at the Golgotha were the last to leave the dying Christ and those to whom the Lord was first revealed.”
Cantalamessa also said that “today there are animated discussions about who wanted Jesus’ death: the Hebrew leaders, or Pilate, or both. One thing is certain in any case: they were men, not women. No woman was involved, even indirectly, in his condemnation and even the only pagan woman mentioned in the narratives, Pilate’s wife, distanced herself from his sentence.”
Women, blessed with the gift of giving life, are naturally endowed, as Pope John Paul II explained, to defend life, promote peace and become an agent of reconciliation in families and in the world.
On Mother’s Day, let us ask our universal Mother, the Virgin Mary, to abundantly bless all women, especially our mothers; and let us pray that our society will know how to value and respect every woman; that it will know how to be open to the numerous gifts that they have to offer within the family, the church and in our society.