By Abby Braun ’05

I was born the day before Mother’s Day and my mom always says that I’m the best Mother’s Day gift she ever received.

Thirty-one years later I’m celebrating my first Mother’s Day as a mom with my own beautiful gift of a daughter. Like any good gift from God, welcoming a child into one’s life is hard and holy work. It takes patience, courage, humility, humor, sacrifice, and a whole lot of grace. Motherhood is not for the faint of heart, and we cannot do it alone.

I’m grateful to be part of a Church that celebrates motherhood. Of course the model that we mothers are pointed to most is Mary, our Blessed Mother, the Mother of God. I count myself among the many Catholics who feel a special connection to Mary. She’s offered me comfort in times of uncertainty and has inspired me to be a more faithful follower of her Son, Jesus. Mary is an exceptional witness for women and men alike, and it is right that she holds a special place in our tradition and in our hearts.

Yet I have to say that having Mary as my spiritual mother is not enough. Blessed as she may be, Mary is not divine. I am not created in the image and likeness of Mary. I’m created in the image and likeness of God, who is neither male nor female, who is both a father and a mother.

The image of God as mother may sound radical to some, but it’s not new. The prophet Isaiah describes God as a woman in labor (42:14) and as a mother who nurses and comforts her child (66:10-13). Jesus compares God to a mother hen who gathers her children under the safety of her wings (Matthew 23:37 and Luke 13:34).

In these early days of motherhood, I can relate to a God who labors and nurses and comforts and shelters her children. And I know that this mothering God—who knit me in my mother’s womb just as she knit my daughter in my womb—will give me the grace to care for the precious child who has been entrusted to me. Mary is sure to be an important companion on the journey, insofar as she points me toward this mothering God.

Every night, as part of our bedtime ritual, my husband and I pray the “Our Father” with our daughter. Of course she is far too little to understand what the words of the prayer mean on an intellectual level. But already she notices that something is happening when we begin the prayer. She slows down and leans into us with a sweet sigh. If I take seriously the ancient teaching that prayer shapes belief, I have to be attentive to the ways in which the words that we choose to pray with our daughter are shaping her faith, even at this tender young age. It is right that we pray the “Our Father” each night, for it is the prayer that Jesus taught us. Yet I’m aware that we need to introduce other prayers as well—prayers that expand her imagination about who God is and how God is at work in her life.

I will close with one such prayer that I intend to hang in my daughter’s room as a reminder, to her and to me, that our mothering God is the One in whom she lives and moves and has her being. I hope that as she grows up in the Catholic faith she will encounter God acting as a mother to us, and will recognize herself in that divine image.

God our mother,
living water,
river of mercy,
source of life,
in whom we live
and move
and have our being,
who quenches our thirst,
refreshes our weariness,
bathes
and washes
and cleanses
our wounds,
be for us always
a fountain of life,
and for all the world
a river of hope
springing up in the midst
of the deserts of despair.

–Miriam Therese Winter