15. Motherhood

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As Fatherhood has its prototype in the Eternal Father, Who generated a Son to His Eternal Image, so Motherhood has its prototype in the Woman Who, from all eternity, was given the high summons to be the Mother of God Incarnate. Since St. Paul describes Our Lord as "the first-born" of all creatures, Mary must therefore be the first Mother, after whom all mothers are patterned.

The essence of motherhood is twofold: (1) The begetting of life, which is a biological process, with its reflections in the animal kingdom. Birth establishes a mother-child relationship. As the tree has its fruit, and the mother hen hatches her eggs, so of every mother who creates dependence may it be said: "Blessed is the fruit of thy womb." (2) But human motherhood is not like animal motherhood, for the soul of the child is not an emanation from its mother's body but a direct creation by God Himself, Who infuses it into the body of the child. As the priest prepares the bread of sacrifice, so the mother prepares the material of birth. But as the Power of God changes the bread into the Body of Christ, so the Power of God infuses life into a body and makes it a human person. This adds to physiological birth, which is in common with animals, the note of co-operation with God. There is something given to her by God which she clothes with flesh. Something is here added to the first notion of motherhood, namely, the bringing into being, not of a flesh, but of a man made to the image and likeness of God. In the case of Mary, we add to the words "Blessed is the fruit of thy womb," the personal name of Jesus.

Human motherhood has two sides: the bringing of life into the world, which involves the co-operation of the father; and the bringing of a person or an "I" into the world, which demands the co-operation of God. The mother-child relationship creates dependence of the offspring on the mother; the mother-person relationship, which is expressed in the personal name given to the child, creates independence of its parents and the right of the child eventually to lead his own life, and even to leave his father and mother and cling to his wife.

This distinction is made clear in the prophecy of Our Lord, Who would be born to Mary: "For our sakes a child is born, to our race a son is given." (Isaias 9:6) St. Luke takes up the same refrain: "Thus that holy thing which is to be born of thee shall be known for the Son of God." (Luke 1:35)

As Mary had something that was her own, namely, her Divine Child, and something that was not her own, namely, Emmanuel, God with us, or Our Savior, so every mother has something which is uniquely her own, and yet something not her own. Being a person, her child must live as a person, with his own rights and liberties, and must work out his own salvation. "You must work to earn your salvation, in anxious fear." (Philippians 2:12) Mothers who abandon their children deny the first aspect of motherhood. Mothers who refuse to give up their sons or daughters, either in marriage or in religious vocations, deny the second aspect of motherhood. "Honor thy Father and thy Mother" is the tribute the children must pay to those who gave them life, but "He is not worthy of me, that loves father or mother more" (Matt. 10:37), is the declaration of independence a soul must make when God calls it to be his spouse.

In both her roles, as a mother who brings life into the world and as a co-operator with God, she assures her own salvation. Maternity in its mere physical aspects has a quality of salvation about it, for Scripture says a woman will find her salvation in child-bearing. (Timothy 2:15) But a mother is also glorified in her children, who mirror forth the grace of Christ in their lives. Mothers are made famous by their children; at the sight of noble sons, there will always be someone in the multitude to cry out, as a woman did to Our Lord: "Blessed is the womb that bore thee, the breast which thou has sucked." (Luke 11:27)

A mother is a double benefactor to humanity: its physical preserver, and its moral provider. Through life, and through the high personal qualities of her children, she is the universe's constant challenge to death, the messenger of cosmic plenitude and the bearer of eternal realities. May it not be true that many women today are loath to create new life because they see motherhood only in its first degree as progenitor, and not in the second degree as co-operator with God in the increase of His Kingdom and the enrichment of His Mystical Body? Motherhood loses half its beauty at least, when it sees birth only from the point of view of biology and ignores the point of view of theology. If birth is only an affair of a man and woman, and not a co-operation between man, woman, and God, then, indeed, it has lost much of its beauty. St. Thomas says: "It is greater and better to be joined to that which is superior, than to supply the defect of what is inferior." Woman primarily is not a restorer of ruins; she is first a co-operator with the Divine. Adding to her co-operation with man the co-operation with God, she once more affirms the secret of marriage: it takes three to make love; man and woman as a generative principle, and God Who infuses an immortal soul.

Planned unparenthood is the deliberate and willful decision on the part of a husband and wife to exclude from God the opportunity to create another to His image and likeness. It is the human will freely frustrating Divine Will, as certain agricultural policies deliberately control the productivity of the earth for the sake of a higher economic price. The non-serviam of Lucifer has had its catastrophic effect throughout creation, and particularly in those who say: "I refuse to accept from God that which is His Holy Will, the increase and multiplication of life." The refusing to be a co-operator with God is to spoil and maim oneself, for of the unused talents, Our Lord said: "Take the talent away."

Medical opinion today is that the increasing psychoses and neuroses in women are due to a flight from motherhood. A wife who had a young tree planted in her garden would not go out each night with a scissors and cut off each new branch that might grow upon the root. She knows it is normal for a tree to sprout branches; she knows, too, that a Planned-Trunkhood, which could bear only one branch in the fifth year, would injure both the trunk and the branch. Branch-control could ultimately spoil the trunk. In statistical language, it does! Five out of every six cases of divorce, or 83-1/2 per cent, stem from marriages having no children!

Returning to the positive, not only is motherhood cosmic through co-operation with a man and co-operation with God for the sake of salvation, it also illustrates the beauty of the world of the supernatural. Man by his nature is dedicated to "making"; woman by her nature is consecrated to "becoming" or "generation." We make what is unlike us in nature; for example, a carpenter makes a table. But we beget what is like us; for example, a mother begets a child. Man's creation is, therefore, a symbol of Creation. God made the world, and the world is unlike Him by nature. Man himself, inasmuch as He is made by God, has no strict right to call God "Father," for he is only the handiwork of the Creator. Woman's role, as generator of life, is a symbol of Divine grace, which makes us "children of God" and gives us the right to call Him "Father," and Our Lord "Brother."

We are constantly invited in Scripture to become what we are not, namely, to convert creaturehood into Christianity, to "become the sons of God." But entrance into the realm of the supernatural order is accomplished only by the death of the old Adam, by sacrifice, and penance; there is a foreshadowing of this in the sacrifices of motherhood in bringing a new life into the world. There is not as much pain in creation as there is in generation, as it is easier to remain a natural man than it is to be born again as a "child of God." If mothers but realize it, they are prolonging the Passion of Christ through the centuries and, at each birth in the flesh, telling mankind that only through labor and self-effacement does one become a child of grace under the Fatherhood of God amidst the brotherhood of man.

Our Lord Himself told the aged Nicodemus that, to be saved, he would have to be born again. The carnal-minded old man could see no spiritual significance in birth, and so he asked Our Lord: "Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb?" (John 3:4) Our Lord then affirmed that motherhood and conversion to Him are related, as symbol and reality; that the womb of a mother is to new physical life what the womb of baptismal waters is to spiritual life. "Believe me, no man can enter into the kingdom of God unless birth comes to him from water, and from the Holy Spirit." (John 3:5)

In our individual Christian lives, most of us cultivate the body and the soul separately. There are many days given to physical betterment; there are very few minutes given to the spiritual. Motherhood recalls that the best lives are those in which the physical and the spiritual development are never separated, as in the mother and in her child's education; both grow together. Precisely because of the soul, there is body development at each instant. The Christian mother is like Simeon, who took the forty-day-old Divine Child in his arms. But the true picture is not that he bore the Child, but the Child bore him. The mother, too, will see herself not merely physically bearing a child, but the Child, composed of body and soul inseparably, bearing her. The new life in her womb comes from God, as grace in the soul comes from God. This spiritual truth at each moment is inseparable from the physical development of the life within. As God Himself stirred within Mary, so the image of God stirs within the mother. Mary bore the Consecrated Host, which is Christ Himself; the mother bears the bread of the sacristy, which is destined for the altar. When finally her child is born, if she is truly Christian she will see that body and soul both grow together, and that the healthy body, at each moment, is vivified by a spiritual-mindedness which will once more declare unto men that sanctification is of body and soul together.

Good and holy thoughts in the mother while bearing the child will affect the child, as fears and shock will affect it in the opposite way. The psychological effects of love on others are tremendous. The mother who bears her child in love and who is conscious that she is fulfilling a Divine command and a holy Messiahship, must see verified in her life the words of Our Lord: "If a man has any love for me, he will be true to my word; and then he will win my Father's love, and we will both come to Him and make our continual abode with Him." (John 14:23) Then the Child will bear her, for it is God's latest act of love to her. "The soul became flesh and dwelt within me." What she is, that her child will be. A mother is like the earth in which the seed of youth develops.

The Gospel tells us that there are four kinds of mothers: "There were grains that fell beside the path, so that all the birds came and ate them up. And others fell on rocky land, where the soil was shallow; they sprang up all at once, because they had not sunk deep in the ground; but as soon as the sun rose they were parched; they had taken no root, and so they withered away. Some fell among briers, so that the briers grew up and smothered them. But others fell where the soil was good, and these yielded a harvest, some a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. Listen you that have ears to hear with." (Matt. 13:4-9) As the bearer of seed, she throws herself completely on God, saying with Mary: Ecce ancilla Domini. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord."

The submission of the earth to seed is passive, although the earth must now undergo the sacrifice of digging and harrowing. But in woman the submission is sacrificial. A woman is capable of more sustained sacrifice than man. Man is more apt to be the hero in one great, passionate outburst of courage. But a woman is heroic through the years, months, and even seconds of daily life, the very repetition of her toils giving them the semblance of the commonplace. Not only her days but her nights, not only her mind, but her body, must share in the Calvary of Mothering. She, therefore, has a greater understanding of redemption than man, for she comes closer to death in bringing forth life.

The two great spiritual laws which, in others, are extrinsic and separated, are united in her: love of neighbor and love of sacrifice. The non-mothers show love of neighbor to a non-self. But a mother's neighbor during pregnancy is one with herself and one whom she must love. Sacrifice is usually understood as a thing accomplished outside one's flesh, but the mother's sacrifice is within her flesh. Not a priest, and priesthood, she, too brings God to man and man to God. She brings God to man by preparing the flesh into which God's Power is already present in the soul; she brings man to God in the second birth of baptism, by offering her child to Christ the Savior As earth's beautiful reflection of the Motherhood of Mary; she, too, can be saluted in an earthly Hail Mary!

Hail Mary

Hail! Mother

Full of grace!

Full of human life; a body formed of the love of husband and wife; a soul born of the love of God.

The Lord is with Thee!

God is with all mothers! "What you have done to the least of these. . .you have done unto me."

Blessed art thou among women.

Every woman is called to be a mother; either physically or spiritually. A woman is most a woman when she is a Christian. A wife is most a spouse when she is a mother.

And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

And blessed is the fruit of thy womb--John, Peter, Mary, Ann. "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord."

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