Fourth Sunday of Lent
Mother’s Day
18 March 2012
Homily
My dear friends,
Paul tells the Ephesians in the second reading of today’s Mass “it is by grace that you have been saved – by the gift of God – we are God’s work of art”.
This is the Fourth Sunday of Lent; it is also Mother’s Day.
An Irish writer penned the following tribute for the day that is in it:
“My life wears many colours and has taken endless twists and turns. Through it all there has been one shining conviction forever holding me together – the certainty that I am loved. It was the love of my mother that gifted me, to light my way when many other loves failed. My childhood filled me with a sense that my mother was delighted with me, that I was a wholesome person. It was through her that I felt I was worthy of respect, enabling me to be secure enough to take the risks in life that I am called to take.
Without this inner experience of being unconditionally loved how could I understand that I am loved by God? So many otherwise fine souls feel so bad about themselves – too unworthy, too unattractive to be loved by God. There is something about the compassion of God that can only be captured on this earth by the selfless heart of a mother. When a mother holds her fretting baby, strokes her child’s hair, wraps her in a towel after a bath, wakes up at night to comfort and soothe the troubled dreams of her toddler – these moments are the truest reflection in our young lives of the love of God for all of us.
It is the mother’s smile, her touch, her voice that awakens love in the heart of the little one. All of this is God’s work. As the gentle morning sun persuades the daisy to open its eyes, it is the light of God, in mother and baby, that creates this miraculous awakening. God celebrates the wonderful miracle of new life through mothers. As we celebrate Mother’s Day my wish to you, the mothers of our community, is that your children will bless and honour you.” “We are God’s work of art,”
I’m sure you would all wish to join in endorsing these sentiments.
+Liam S. MacDaid
