9/8/22 - The Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

I Want Nothing Today but to Contemplate Jesus and His Mother Mary. 

God used motherhood as the instrument that made salvation possible. 

So confused is the time we live in that the gift of motherhood is so despised. Drugs are taken to prevent it. Devices are used to block it. Pregnancy is treated like a tumor that needs to be ripped out. 

It is through motherhood that God’s plan of salvation was made possible. He could have sent His Son down fully formed like a character from a science fiction movie. Instead He had Him born of a woman, in time, with a family history a checkered as anyone's. Mary gave Jesus His humanity, and God gave her the gifts that perfected her humanity. Mary could do this precisely because she is a woman. As with the holy women whose praises are sung in the Old Testament, God's will is done through Mary because only a woman could do it. 

It is woman who carries the child in her very body. She experiences his or her first stirrings. She suffers the pain and the joy of birth. She feeds her child from the same body that nurtured him for 9 months. This is a special, precious gift no man fully understands. That this precious power is rejected so out of hand by so many is a tragedy beyond words.

I have been on social media too long. I can already hear the objections. "Are you saying a woman's only worth is in having babies?" "Are women to be just baby factories and nothing more? "What about women who because of age, infirmity or some accident of nature can't bear children? Are they less women than others who can and do?"

The exception does not negate general truth, and those who are incapable of childbirth for reasons beyond their control, or who have renounced married life for the Kingdom are no less women. I'm not writing of them. I am saying that a woman who rejects motherhood because she thinks it's liberating or will be more fulfilled somehow is walking down a dark path. The same is true for men who reject fatherhood for similar reasons.

If I can make an analogy a little closer to home. I often hear priests say that they are not just "sacrament machines." They will stress that their work is more than just saying Mass. It is true; most priests work as administrators, teachers, counselors or any number of jobs that take up more time in their day than administering the sacraments. It's often vital work, important work, work that needs to be done. A priest though, who does not have the sacramental ministry, and especially celebration of the Eucharist and Reconciliation, at the center of his life isn't much of a priest. There are priests who because of age, infirmity or persecution that are not able to administer the sacraments. The sacrifice they offer is that they are unable to minister at the altar. They are no less priests. But a priest so professional and cosmopolitan that he doesn't see the sacramental ministry as central to his identity is rejecting the most precious gift he's been given. Worse yet, he's robbing others of the gifts God want to give them through his ministry.

I give thanks today. I give thanks for the gift of the Blessed Mother. I give thanks to Sts. Joaquin and Ann. Their selflessly following of God's call has enriched countless generations. 

I give thanks for Mary's maternal care. I give thanks to my own mother, and pray for her. I pray that as a people we may truly cherish the gift we've been given: the gift of cooperating with God in His ongoing plan for salvation.