Mother's Day / Feast of the Ascension

As we approach the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord, which is on Sunday, May 12, I can't help but notice it's also Mother's Day - an American holiday instituted by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. Even though it's a secular holiday, we celebrate it in the church as an opportunity to honor our loving mothers for all they do for us, and for the truly Christ-like sacrificial, unconditional love they give us. 

It's also the season of Sacraments of Initiation in our St. John Paul II family of parishes. As Worship Director, I know it to be an exciting and busy time with extra celebrations of Mass that will be filled with young people and their families. As a father, I got to experience my son receive the sacrament of Confirmation, another son graduate from college, and my daughter make her First Holy Communion - all within a two-week span.

I think of my own mother - God rest her soul - and how she would've loved to meet and love my younger kids. She died in 2006, so she never met my four youngest children. I was blessed with a loving, motherly mother. I realized by high school how lucky I was. Not everyone had loving, motherly mothers. When we were young kids, my siblings and I would get our change together and buy Mom a corsage to wear to church and then a restaurant on Mother's Day. As ugly as those flowers might've been, she wore them all day. She loved us, and was proud to be our mom.

I remember the first Mother's Day without her. Of course there was a nagging sadness that I tried to ignore, because as a dad I wanted to give my wife and our kids a happy Mother's Day as well! But a priest who saw me after Mass asked me what was wrong. He saw in my face that I was fighting sadness. So I told him I was missing my mother. I'll never forget what he told me. 

"Johnbonnino," (he was Sicilian and treated me like a son) "you're never closer to your Mom than you are at Mass!" He explained that when we partake in Holy Communion, we unite ourselves with Christ. We are - in fact - experiencing the Communion of Christ along with the COMMUNION of Angels and Saints. Holy Communion is a foretaste of Heaven. When I partake in Mass, I'm doing what the Angels and Saints do perpetually for eternity. And what's even more amazing is that they (the Angels and Saints) are right next to you, shoulder to shoulder, united in Christ - in the same communion - NOT under the appearance of bread and wine, but with Christ in full splendor. 

It's easy to forget the magnitude of the event of Mass, so let's use this day to remember. 

We don't forget to love our moms, but we can forget that their love for us closely resembles the Cross. Jesus gives us his mother Mary. Let us ask her for her intercession on this Feast of her Son's glorious Ascension into Heaven to fill us with joy and peace and gratitude to all who are motherly in our lives.

John Wright

Worship Director