Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 'C'

Sunday July 8, 2007

“Holy Mother Church”

I can still hear the associate pastor in the parish of my boyhood years, referring to the Church as “Holy Mother Church”. I recall asking myself, “How can the Church be a woman, much less a mother, and still be the ‘Body of Christ?’”—In hindsight, a simplistic question, to be sure. However, in those rather simple times, we were not prone to question or express our doubt. If the priest said the Church was a mother, so be it! Otherwise, I have no recollection of this title having had a significant impact on my elementary understanding of the Church or my embryonic experience of Church life.

Many years later, however, Pope John XXIII wrote an encyclical entitled, Mater et Magistra — Mother and Teacher. The title of papal letters is taken from the first two or three opening words of the document. This encyclical pre-dated the Second Vatican Council but was one of Pope John’s monumental works. In it, he summarized the Church’s social teaching from Leo XIII to the late 1950s but rooted it more emphatically in the teachings of Jesus Christ. In essence, Pope John was making very practical the teaching of Jesus Christ that the love of God cannot be separated from the love of neighbor. Moreover, he stressed the reality that the Church must be the first not only to proclaim the message but also to live the message in the same manner in which a mother is the first to practice what she teaches her children. A woman’s love — is proactive. So too must the Church be proactive in works of justice and charity.

A mother’s love is uniquely sacrificial. Who but a mother can accurately describe the pain that accompanied the birth of a child. It has been noted often that a man could never bear the pain of childbirth. We men need not be dismayed by that observation. It does not mean that a man’s love is superficial or that we cannot bear willingly the pain of sacrificial love. Jesus as man surely demonstrated the totality of a human sacrificial love, male and female. However, a woman bears not only intense physical pain as in childbirth but also a unique anguish of soul as she identifies with the life-struggles of her children.

This may be demonstrated even further in an image popular in medieval art and poetry — the pelican with her brood of chicks. This symbol is represented in one of the stained windows in the nave of Assumption Church. In the process of feeding her young, the pelican presses her feed sack full of fish against her neck in such a way that she seems to pierce her breast with her bill. The redness of the tip of her beak extols the notion that the pelican actually draws blood from her breast so that her young might live. Hence it became a powerful image of the maternal instinctive but sacrificial love of God manifested in Jesus’ life-giving death on the cross.

By the way, this symbol was adopted by the founders of the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth at Convent Station to demonstrate the sacrificial love to which they are called as a religious community. The large number of sisters who have given their life through martyrdom is of historic record.

In his short-lived service as Pope, John Paul I reintroduced the image of mother when he affirmed the multiple facets of God’s personality: “God is our father, even more, God is our mother… if children are ill.. or if they are sick with badness and are on the wrong track… they have an additional claim to be loved by their mother…” Astounding, really.

In any event, I think the Scriptures this weekend suggest that we revisit the title and it’s application to the Church as woman and its mission to the world in an age of excessive individualism and increasing narcissism.

The first reading from Isaiah refers to Jerusalem as woman and mother. In later times, the Church will be called the new Jerusalem. “Rejoice with Jerusalem in joy, that you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast… and you shall be carried on her arm, and dandled on her knees.” Isaiah, however, is inferring more than this. In the name of God, Isaiah goes on to state: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.” In other words, applying feminine qualities to God with great ease.

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul is surely referring to the pelican-like sacrificial maternal love of God manifested in Christ toward which he, Paul, strove: “May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world…. From now on, let no one make trouble for me; for I carry the marks of Jesus branded on my body.”

We are members of a Church in what is often described by secular commentators as a “post Christian” world, challenged to adapt to every preference within and without, and this is not an irrelevant or inappropriate expectation. The Church ought not put its head in the sand or ignore the cultural changes that impinge upon traditional values and lifestyles. However, the distinction between responsible and irresponsible adaptation can be very subtle indeed. This factor coupled with a dose of denial can easily result in our succumbing to philosophies and goals contrary to the common good, for example, greed in the marketplace, exploitation of the earth’s resources, consumerism, sectarianism, exploitation of women, ageism, chauvinism, to name only a few of the prominent “isms” many of which affect even the Church itself such as authoritarianism, sexism and clericalism, to name only a few.

As members of the Church, we are being sent forth with the courage of a warrior but with the strength of a mother. We are called as men and women not to dictate or dominate but to enlighten and edify. This calls for nothing less than sacrificial love and the assurance that God will uphold us even in the face of criticism and rejection. In essence, this is a call to true Christian discipleship.

Joan Chittister, has some prophetic words that seem apropos of today’s texts. In rather forceful tones, she states:

“The problem with Christian discipleship is that instead of simply requiring a kind of academic or ascetic exercise — the implications of most kinds of ‘discipleship,’ — Christian discipleship requires a kind of living that is sure, eventually, to tumble a person from the banquet tables of prestigious boards and the reviewing stands of presidents, and the processions of ecclesiastical knighthood to the most suspect margins of both Church and society.”

“To follow Jesus, in other words, is to follow the one who turns the world upside down, even the religious world.”

“Flag and fatherland, profit and power, chauvinism and sexism, clericalism, and authoritarianism done in the name of Christ are not Christian virtues whatever the system that looks to them for legitimacy.”

Discipleship implies a commitment to leave nets and homes, positions and securities, lordship and legalities to be now — in our world — what Christ was in his world: healer and prophet, voice and heart, call and sign of the God whose design for this world is justice and love. The disciples hears the poor, and ministers to the beggars of this world who having been used up the by the establishment are then abandoned to find their way alone, unaccompanied through a patriarchal world, unnoticed in a patriarchal world, unwanted in a patriarchal world but mightily, mightily patronized in a patriarchal world.” The price is high!

Although the words in Luke’s narrative this morning are subtle, they are nonetheless strong. The instruction given by Jesus to his disciples and I assume they included women as well as men, has been referred to by one commentator as a “mother’s litany.” What mother concerned for every aspect of the safety and success of her children does not remind them of certain counsels and cautions: “Be careful, look both ways before crossing the street; stick to your convictions; remember what you learned at home; be courageous but don’t look for fights; don’t do to others what you would not have them do to you; say your prayers and be kind to others.”

In like manner, sending his disciples forth, Jesus said to them in so many words: “Go on your way. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; bring peace to whomever you meet, eat what is placed before you. Remember what you learned at my table; be courageous and do not worry about rejection. My love is sufficient for you. Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

And so in the light of all of this rich traditional theology, why in God’s name cannot women be configured to Christ in the priesthood?

They already are!

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