We have a pre-school program renting Holy Trinity’s School building. It’s called Liberty Post Stars. It helps preschoolers with special needs and disabilities. Several times a day I see young women called Certified Special Instructors and Teaching Assistants walk the children around Murphy Hall on rainy days or outside on our beautiful lawns.
You would be touched to watch the instructors help these children with their undivided attention. They stoop to tie shoes, they pause to show the children the daffodils by the church, they invite fun conversation with the children as they walk along. I can only imagine the skills they have to help bring learning alive in the classroom.
What’s my point? They are women. They are women . . . and they are geniuses. That’s right, they are “Person Geniuses”. They have a sense of the personhood in each of their young charges. They sense their emotional state, their needs. They understand what has to happen for the child to learn. And most touching . . . they’re full of hope for each child’s well-being.
And while we’re at it, we might as well call them Mothers because that is what they do – – – they give birth to the “person”. It’s the genius of women. And their gift is equal to any doctor, psychologist, teacher, social worker, or priest. (Remember Anne Sullivan? She was the only one able to break through the silent darkness of Helen Keller.)
I’m not saying women don’t have other geniuses as well. (Witness astronaut, Jessica Meir, currently doing physics aboard the International Space Station. Or the women who’s protests ended the violence in Northern Ireland and an end to the fierce IRA).
What I am saying is that only women can be a Mother – – both by giving natural birth or by giving birth to the personhood of the people she loves. (Men have their own genius. We’ll get to that later!)
And so today is Mother’s Day. Who’s yo momma?!
My mother is Rosemary. She gave birth to me and to my sisters, Mary Patricia and Maureen. Those two are currently loving me with that “woman, mother genius” that keeps me in place and lets me know I always have a home with them.
Pope John Paul points to the unique gift women possess in their motherhood. See what you think.
Motherhood involves a special communion with the mystery of life as it develops in the mother’s womb. The mother is filled with wonder at this mystery of life, and ‘understands’ with unique intuition what is happening in- side her. In the light of the ‘beginning’, the mother accepts and loves as a person the child she is carrying in her womb.
This unique contact with the new human being developing within her gives rise to an attitude towards human beings – not only towards her own child, but every human being – which profoundly marks the woman’s personality.
A Blessed Mother’s Day.
Fr. Tim
