Mother’s Day Commercialized

Happy Easter! Alleluia, Jesus Christ has risen! Alleluia!

      This Sunday, the second Sunday of May, we celebrate Mother’s Day (In Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador, Mother’s Day is always the 10th of May). It is a day for each family to celebrate their mother and honor her life. While the day is not an official religious holiday there are strong traditions which start the day with prayer and thanksgiving for mothers. There have been attempts to connect the day with Mary, mother of Jesus, but this was not the specific intent of those who initiated the recognition of mothers with a special holiday. Anna Jarvis is credited with starting and sustaining the day for mothers in 1908. By 1911 every state in the U.S. recognized Mother’s Day. And in 1914, President Wilson enshrined the day as a national holiday on the second Sunday of May.

      Anna Jarvis became concerned about how the Mother’s Day recognition quickly became commercialized. That someone would turn a day of love and sentiment to a day of money and profits did not please her. She protested the loss of focus on the gift of motherhood and mothering. She saw the selling of cards and gifts as a distraction from the need to tell our mothers in our own words that we love them and respect them.

      If you are able today, please tell your mother face-to-face, or by phone, that you love her. If you need forgiveness from her, then ask. If you need to tell your mother that you forgive her, then tell her. Do not let another day pass without desiring to share the best with your mother.

      For our deceased mothers, too, we pray. I ask my own mother for her intercession for the good of my family, for the good of my Norbertine Community, for the good of the parish family, and for my own good. Those are the things my mother would want to pray for if she was still on this earth. Why would I not ask her whom I believe to be in heaven to pray for me and the people who are important to me in this world? That is what mothers do! I love you Mom!

Happy Easter! Alleluia, Jesus Christ has risen! Alleluia!

Peace, Fr. Andy