Mothers’ Day

Pastoral Prayer – May 12, 2024, Mothers’ Day

Here in America, anyway, today is Mothers’ Day, and so as we come to our time of intercession we think of our own mothers.

Your personal context and experience may be what we think of as “normal” in our society – a woman who carried you for nine months, who gave physical birth to you and who raised you and did all sorts of things for you—fed you, changed your diapers, taught you how to dress and how to tie your shoes and how to whistle and how to read and how to drive a car. Perhaps she taught you to pray and sing. Perhaps she taught you how to deal with frustration and how to forgive, how to show kindness, compassion, and love.

It is remarkable how little instruction the first-time mother has in being a mother when so much is needed and expected.

But perhaps your mother was different from that pattern. Maybe she chose you in adoption, or in a second marriage, or because she was close by when you needed a mother.

Maybe it was your grandmother who did those things for you. Maybe some of them were done by an older sister or an aunt. There have always been surrogate mothers.

Let’s pray together for the mothers who raised us, the ones who cared for us, the ones who cared about us.

Holy Father, we come to you—the source of all caring, compassion and love—to lift up the mothers in our midst:

• We pray for the mothers who have carried children, who have cared for them, who have raised them and seen them go off, and sometimes lost them—
• We pray for the mothers of young adults, who are seeing their relationships with their children change in ways that are sometimes hurtful or confusing—
• We pray for the mothers who even now have small children, eager to learn, eager to listen; but requiring so much patience, so much time, so much attention—
• We pray for mothers-to-be, who wonder if they will ever be mothers, if they will be up to the task, if the world will be a hospitable place for children—
• We pray for those who perform the role of mother to those whose mothers are absent or distant or weakened by life—

we pray that you would give these your abundant compassion, your never-ending love, your particular care.

Holy Father, we thank you that you have modeled these maternal traits—compassion, love and care—in your word, in your son, in our lives, and through those who have been our mothers.

Amen.