Memorial Day Meditation for Moms
How many moms make it their mantra, parting words like "Go in peace" from the Mass?
Except they say: "Don't forget..." and "Remember..."
Remember to pick up a gallon of milk. Don't forget to turn in your lunch money.
Remember to thank Grandma for the gift. Don't forget to call when you get home.
How many moms make it their mission, preserving memories to be savored
and shared?
The lock of hair, the bulging scrapbook, a top drawer crammed with kids' drawings.
How many moms, moved by the Messiah, wake up with bleary eyes and bad hair but still manage to maneuver their tribe to Mass on Sundays, so that they too won't forget.
"Do this in memory of me." "Remember, Lord, your people."
"Remember all of us, gathered here before you."
Help us remember, O Lord, the faithful witness of mothers, their vigil of
remembering-sometimes forgetting themselves in the process.
-Mary Lynn Hendrickson |
Like a rock
I think my son must wonder sometimes how much of his world is built on shifting sands. A year after he graduated from our parish's Catholic grammar school, it closed due to low enrollment. Last year he graduated from Chicago's high school seminary, a historic institution attended by my husband, my brother, and scores of men we know: It is sadly closing after this school year. Our city's landmark department store, Marshall Field's, where we used to shop, last fall was bought out by Macy's of New York, now despised by many Chicagoans for dumping the Field's name. Our local ice cream parlor, a neighborhood favorite since the 1970s, closed while he was away at college. I could go on and on.
In an interview in the April issue of U.S. Catholic, noted spirituality columnist Father Ronald Rolheiser, O.M.I. was asked about stability: "I honestly think this is the key to everything," he said. "What people today are wanting is something or someone that stays. They're so used to being disillusioned that it's part of our psyche to expect people to leave, to betray us, or to fall from grace."
Kids, especially, need their parents to be "someone that stays." They want parents around to help with homework, keep them out of danger, read to them, pray with them, love them. However dependable we are, we still find that we can't protect our kids from life: Loved ones die, jobs are lost, people move away, illness happens.
"Stand firm in the Lord," says St. Paul (Phil 4:1). If we let kids witness that even in the darkest days and unhappiest developments, we turn to God, who is always present and involved, that's the main thing. God within them, God who loves them even more than Mom and Dad do.
We can also provide some bedrock in how we treat our children. Can they depend on us to be consistent in our listening, our expectations, our forgiveness? In Room 304 of St. Matthias Transfiguration School is a list posted by Mrs. Friedlander, the seventh-grade teacher. Addressed to her students, it reads: "I believe in you. I trust you. I know you can handle life's situations. You are listened to. You are cared for." Thanks, Mrs. Friedlander. I think this lesson of yours is for parents, too.
A final story regarding her third point, helping kids learn to stand on their own two feet. Last year I took my son, age 17, to the post office to apply for a passport for a school trip. Antoinette, the formidable woman behind the passport counter, was getting his papers in order. Did he have an ID? she wanted to know. No, said James, who had not yet gotten his driver's license and had no state ID. "James," she said, looking him sternly in the eye, "a man must stand alone!" She told him firmly how, if his passport were lost, he would need an official ID, and he'd better go out and get one pronto. Antoinette's no-nonsense delivery was certainly a more appropriate message for a 17-year-old than "Mom and Dad will always be there to bail you out."
So, with thanks to Antoinette and Mrs. Friedlander and Father Rolheiser, let us meditate together this summer on the virtue of stability. Not the most exciting virtue, perhaps, but a crucial one for good old Mom and Dad.
Catherine O'Connell-Cahill is senior editor of U.S. Catholic
. This column appeared in the May 2007 issue of At Home With Our Faith.
Rave review
A Community of Love: Spirituality of Family Life
One of my favorite things about A Community of Love: Spirituality of Family Life (ACTA Publications) is author David M. Thomas' liberal use of quotes from Pope John Paul II on the ways our families are a "school of love" for the Christian way of life. "In and through the events, problems, and difficulties and circumstances of everyday life, God comes to the family," reminds the pope, amidst Thomas' own reflections, prayers, and practical suggestions. And Thomas has a perspective that delights. Sometimes, as he admits, "We easily slip into routines, and it's OK to take each other for granted most of the time." But there are also "those special, very holy moments when these kids look at me and I look at them...sharing our lives in a deeply significant way. These moments may be fleeting...but in the middle of them we experience God." Don't miss Thomas' prayer reflections, such as "The Wonder of Water", where a trip to the beach with red buckets turns into thoughts about Baptism, or his hands-on suggestions for developing Catholic faith in children, some as ordinary as "Speak well of other people" and "Share with your children your own worries and hopes."
Humor me
Proof that Meryl Streep doesn't need a good script to deliver a great line: "You can't get spoiled if you do your own ironing."
Tool Box:
Family-faith resources for:
Group prayer:
rosarybowl.org
Kids' Catholicism:
catechistsjourney.org
Mothers:
mops.org
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