Homily Notes for May 13. Mothers' Day, Sixth Sunday of Easter
Today, I would like to speak about Mothers’ Day and also about the first reading for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Acts, Chapter 15.
The reading from Acts describes a conflict in the early church about whether Gentile converts needed to observe the rituals and obligations of the Jewish Law. Though the specific questions of that conflict are long resolved, elements of that conflict have been present throughout religious history. The basic question is how are we saved? Is it through our own efforts, our success in observing the law or a set of practices and rituals? Or is it by God’s grace, God’s unconditional love and our acceptance of that grace?
I often say that, even though we “know” at one level that God is the one who wants the relationship with us; God seeks to saver us; God offers unconditional love, there is another level at which we live our lives as though we were seeking the relationship and God is looking for an excuse to break it off. There are many reasons for this, probably connected with the attitudes we have absorbed from significant people in our lives. Religious leaders often model a God looking for reasons to condemn us.
We are also, regardless of our theology, infected with the need to fix ourselves. We all have some list off of which we work, some set of obligations, some ideal image. We tell ourselves that we will be happy, saved or all right, when we have successfully achieved what is on that list.
Today we celebrate Mothers’ Day. So many Mothers’ Day cards describe the “perfect mother.” They extol the virtues of motherhood. I wonder how many mothers get really depressed when they compare themselves to the ideal mother. We all fall short. It could be our image of the ideal mother, the ideal father, the ideal priest, and the ideal _. That ideal will always condemn us in our own judgment.
Mothers are called not so much to be efficient managers of their children’s growth and development as participants in the wonderful mystery of how their life, which ultimately is a gift of God, unfolds. There are “successes” and “failures,” Above all there is grace.
Thomas Merton quotes someone in one of his journals – I remember but couldn’t find the exact source – as saying something to the effect that, “Only when a priest realizes that he is not up to his ideal as a priest and cannot be but that, despite it all, he must keep faith with it and with himself will any grace for him and his people come from his existential need.” That’s a mouthful!
What I take it to say is that I will never succeed in keeping all the demands of my life perfectly. I will never succeed in fixing myself. I will never live up to the demands of the law. But I must keep faith with my ideals and with myself. And there will be grace in that.
What do I mean by grace? Gerald May wrote a book called "Simply Sane" in which he says the ultimate sanity is when you walk into a child's bedroom and the child is asleep. In that moment, you don't have to do anything to "fix" the child or manage the child. You don't have to "fix" yourself in relation to the child. You can simply appreciate the mystery of it all. That seems like a moment of grace to me.
My prayer for the Mothers who celebrate Mothers’ day and for all of us is to live with the lightness and the freedom and the happiness of grace.
We can all recall or identify moments of sheer grace in our lives. Treasure them. Savor them. Believe that these moments of grace reflect what really is more than all our efforts and our successes and failures.
What are the moments of grace in your life? Make a list. Let gratitude come into your life. Savor them.
The reading from Acts describes a conflict in the early church about whether Gentile converts needed to observe the rituals and obligations of the Jewish Law. Though the specific questions of that conflict are long resolved, elements of that conflict have been present throughout religious history. The basic question is how are we saved? Is it through our own efforts, our success in observing the law or a set of practices and rituals? Or is it by God’s grace, God’s unconditional love and our acceptance of that grace?
I often say that, even though we “know” at one level that God is the one who wants the relationship with us; God seeks to saver us; God offers unconditional love, there is another level at which we live our lives as though we were seeking the relationship and God is looking for an excuse to break it off. There are many reasons for this, probably connected with the attitudes we have absorbed from significant people in our lives. Religious leaders often model a God looking for reasons to condemn us.
We are also, regardless of our theology, infected with the need to fix ourselves. We all have some list off of which we work, some set of obligations, some ideal image. We tell ourselves that we will be happy, saved or all right, when we have successfully achieved what is on that list.
Today we celebrate Mothers’ Day. So many Mothers’ Day cards describe the “perfect mother.” They extol the virtues of motherhood. I wonder how many mothers get really depressed when they compare themselves to the ideal mother. We all fall short. It could be our image of the ideal mother, the ideal father, the ideal priest, and the ideal _. That ideal will always condemn us in our own judgment.
Mothers are called not so much to be efficient managers of their children’s growth and development as participants in the wonderful mystery of how their life, which ultimately is a gift of God, unfolds. There are “successes” and “failures,” Above all there is grace.
Thomas Merton quotes someone in one of his journals – I remember but couldn’t find the exact source – as saying something to the effect that, “Only when a priest realizes that he is not up to his ideal as a priest and cannot be but that, despite it all, he must keep faith with it and with himself will any grace for him and his people come from his existential need.” That’s a mouthful!
What I take it to say is that I will never succeed in keeping all the demands of my life perfectly. I will never succeed in fixing myself. I will never live up to the demands of the law. But I must keep faith with my ideals and with myself. And there will be grace in that.
What do I mean by grace? Gerald May wrote a book called "Simply Sane" in which he says the ultimate sanity is when you walk into a child's bedroom and the child is asleep. In that moment, you don't have to do anything to "fix" the child or manage the child. You don't have to "fix" yourself in relation to the child. You can simply appreciate the mystery of it all. That seems like a moment of grace to me.
My prayer for the Mothers who celebrate Mothers’ day and for all of us is to live with the lightness and the freedom and the happiness of grace.
We can all recall or identify moments of sheer grace in our lives. Treasure them. Savor them. Believe that these moments of grace reflect what really is more than all our efforts and our successes and failures.
What are the moments of grace in your life? Make a list. Let gratitude come into your life. Savor them.
Labels: Homily Notes for coming Sunday
posted by Fr. Larry Voelker at
7:24 AM
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