Always a Mother

Mother, pain, death, fecundity are not only suggestive or haunting words. They are expressions so intimately related and so mutually connected that, in a certain sense, they are synonymous.

The word mother is all at the same time: sacred and earthly, dawn and sunset, puzzle and prize, church bells and silence, warrior and peacemaker... She is like fertile soil, always fostering growth yet ready to bury the dead, untiringly perpetuating life through immortal generations.

But similarly, like at the hour of giving birth when she is modestly “behind the curtain,” all the heroism of the mother passes by, barely noticed in a modest simplicity devoid of poignancy. She suffers silently. She cries secretly. At night she keeps watch. During the day, she works. She is the candle holder. The children are the light. She gives life as the earth does: silently. That’s the source of her beauty and grandeur.

The mystery of Mary shines a light on what we have described as the eternal essence of motherhood. The portrayal of Mary as the Mother assumes and resumes the pain, the struggle, and the hopes of the infinite number of mothers who have eternalized life on earth.

Extracted from the book ·The Silence of Mary” by Father Ignacio Larrañaga