On Mothering Sunday

 Thoughts on Mothering Sunday (15^th March 2026)

Exodus 2.1-10; Psalm 127.1-4; Colossians3.12-17; John 19.25b-27 

(NB click on the Bible references above to be taken to the passages)

There’s something about mothering that brings something about God into clearer focus. 

Mothers are representations of the Christian God in a very particular way.

They are living icons, if you like, of the humility, vulnerability and passion of God, as he has made himself known in Jesus.

I’ll try to flesh that out a little this morning, but before I begin please don’t feel excluded if you don’t happen to be a mother. We are all capable of ministering maternally to each other at times so count yourself in – as well as talking to literal mothers I am talking to myself and to you all.

Let’s begin with humility.

Many years ago in the early 2000’s I was teaching in a Catholic secondary school in London and a colleague in the Religious Studies department delivered an assembly that I remember vividly.

He began by asking the boys 2 questions:

Question 1. Who’s the most important person in your family?  The answer was overwhelmingly in favour of mothers by about 70%. What can I say? They loved their mothers like most good Catholic boys do!

Question 2. Who cleans the toilet in your house? The answer, again, was overwhelmingly in favour of mothers by about 80% (that raised an eyebrow with some of my female colleagues who felt for the 10% of mothers who cleaned the toilets without the title of ‘most important’!)

The message of the assembly was very clear: sometimes ‘importance’ isn’t measured by ‘status’ in the everyday sense of that word. The truly ‘important’ person doesn’t consider themselves to be ‘above’ the menial tasks of service to those with whom they live, and those around them.

And so here is our first glimpse of mothering as an image of the God who divested himself of glory and majesty, and humbled himself to take on our flesh. The letter to the Philippians puts it like this: Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness.  (Philippians 2:5-7).

Remember if you will that Jesus made a certain kind of servanthood one of the pillars of Christian practice when he said, The greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted (Mt 23:11-12).

When Jesus knelt before his disciples and washed their feet we are given a glimpse of something very profound that perhaps mothers are already familiar with: there’s nothing inherently ignoble, or demeaning, in lowering yourself and kneeling in the service of another, if it is done in love. If we do find it ignoble, or demeaning it’s because we aren’t doing it in love, and we haven’t yet grasped our true identity and dignity in God.

The passage in John makes this link between knowing our inherent dignity in God and the ability to humble ourselves in service very clear: Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him (John 13:3-5).

Let’s move on to the second point about God that is particularly well represented by motherhood and that’s God’s vulnerability.

We can begin with the obvious point that he was incarnate. He became a baby which is vulnerability personified isn’t it? Not only did he become a baby but he entrusted himself to a particular Mother at a particular time and in a particular place.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that most mothers feel acutely vulnerable themselves after giving birth, and that sense of vulnerability never goes away, because they are always aware that they have brought a child into a dangerous world.

Remember that soon after Jesus’ birth King Herod put a contract on the Child’s head so that the Holy Family had to flee to Egypt to protect their Son (Matthew 2:13-15).

What’s more, in Luke’s Gospel a prophecy was directed at Mary about her Son’s fate, and her own fate – it’s called the Song of Simeon and it’s the words of a holy old man, who on seeing the child Jesus presented in the Temple, exclaimed to his Mother: ‘This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed - and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’ (Luke 2:34-35)

Mary lived with a profound sense that the world was going to harm her Son, and that she would feel his pain as though it was her own pain.

Now I am not saying that fathers are incapable of that level of empathy - perhaps some of us are – but I do think that degree of empathy is something exquisitely characteristic of maternal love.

There’s also an important lesson here about ‘letting go’ isn’t there? We know that the world can be a difficult and dangerous place. All of us have been wounded to some degree or other: we have known rejection; betrayal; slander; and even brutality of one form or another. So we sometimes make it our mission never to allow the world to wound our children. Well, life wounds everyone and it’s no use pretending that it won’t happen to our children too.

We do them no favours if we suffocate them with this kind of neurotic care, and Mary is the icon par excellence of a Mother who carries a deep sense that God is the author and finisher of her Son’s life. She is not the one who is ultimately in control.

When she presented him in the Temple she was acknowledging that he belonged first to God, who had a particular destiny for him. I wonder if you have ever considered that when you had your child (or children) baptised, it was also an acknowledgement that you children belonged to first to God and that he is the ultimate author of their lives?

Mary serves as a great reminder of the vulnerability inherent in maternal love for children. She also a great example of someone who refused to erect a defence against that heartbreaking sense of vulnerability by trying to overprotect her child. She trusted God with her Son.

Her Child was wounded by the world in the most dramatic fashion possible and it is by his wounds that we are healed (Isaiah 53:5). Our own wounds can also be transformed into springs of compassion and healing for others if we refuse to allow them to turn us into cynical, bitter specimens who are unable to practice generosity and love.

And now to the final point. That in some sense, motherhood represents the passion of God.

There’s something about Motherhood, in its truest sense, that is willing to suffer for, and with, those she loves. She knows that loving and suffering are two sides of the same coin (yes, I am personifying Motherhood!)

For a start each of us is given life by a mother who suffered excruciating pain to act as a gateway to our existence on this earth, and in this I think all mothers share a profound understanding of Jesus’ suffering. They know that suffering is the inevitable precursor to new life.

Let me explain: John tells us that after suffering the torments of crucifixion Jesus’ side was pierced by a lance, and water and blood gushed from his side (John 19:34). The Church, represented by the sacramental water of baptism and the sacramental blood of the eucharist, is born from Jesus’ side in the same way that Eve is born from Adam’s side. The symbolism is unmissable. Jesus is giving birth to a new kind of humanity through his excruciating labour on the cross.

The English medieval mystic Julian of Norwich was very eloquent on Jesus’ motherhood. She saw it very clearly and wrote: Our great Father, almighty God…knows us and loved us before time began. Out of this knowledge, in his most wonderful deep love, by the far-seeing eternal counsel of all the blessed Trinity, he wanted the second person to become our Mother, our brother and our saviour.

She goes on: The mother can give her child to suck of her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself, and does, most courteously and most tenderly, with the blessed sacrament, which is the precious food of true life (from her ‘Revelations of Divine Love’).

I am going to finish by bringing this down to earth a little because I fear that some of you mothers out there may think I have presented an ideal, and far too heroic, vision of motherhood.

Perhaps this is something men are prone to do – we can easily idealise women, and motherhood, and we can forget that underneath it all we are just talking about girls, who are daughters as well as mothers; daughters who are in need of their own mothers. Just as we are boys who are sons as well as fathers; sons who are also in need of our own mothers.

We are all fallible human beings, who all find it difficult to live up to the lofty callings of motherhood and fatherhood. We all fail in many ways and so we need the merciful consoling love of our mother-father God to soothe us and restore us when we fail.

We also need someone to be Mother to us in the fullest human sense of that word because, our own mothers were also fallible human beings.

They, in turn, were just girls, who were (or are) daughters as well as mothers; daughters who were in need of their own mothers just as we are. And so the cycle goes, back through the generations to the beginning.

We heard in today’s Gospel that God, in his loving-wisdom, has given us that great human Mother to be our own spiritual Mother.

Jesus gifted us his own Mother, Mary, as one of his final, supremely generous acts. He looked down from at his cross at his Mother, standing next to his Beloved Disciple, John, and gave them to each other, saying,  ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’

John did what all Jesus’ Beloved Disciples would benefit from doing. We are told that from that hour, the disciple took her into his own home. (John 19:25-27)

John stands for us in this little story. We are all Beloved Disciples, whether we are mothers or fathers, sons or daughters. We are all in need of mothering, and Mary, the girl who is at once the daughter of the Father, the Mother of the Son and the spouse of the Holy Spirit, stands ready to minister her supremely human maternal love to us, if we do what John did and take her into our home too – the home of our hearts.

Let us pray.

Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, amen.

(The Picture is of The Pietà by Michelangelo. It represents the "Sixth Sorrow" of the Virgin Mary, when she held the body of her Son when he was taken down from the Cross)