A mother can never forget her children, Mary: Day 099

A mother can never forget her children

St. Alphonsus insists that once we realize that Mary is our mother, with a mother’s fierce love for us, we won’t doubt her undying concern for us.

Since Mary is our mother, we should consider how great is the love she bears us.

Love toward our children is a necessary impulse of nature. St. Thomas says that this is the reason why the divine law imposes on children the obligation of loving their parents, but gives no express command that parents should love their children. For nature itself has so strongly implanted it in all creatures that—as St. Ambrose remarks—“we know that a mother will expose herself to danger for her children,” and even the most savage beasts cannot do otherwise than love their young.

It’s said that even tigers, on hearing the cry of their cubs taken by hunters, will go into the sea and swim until they reach the vessel in which they are cap- tured. Since the very tigers, says our most loving mother Mary, can’t forget their young, how can I forget to love you, my children? And even, she adds, were such a thing possible as that a mother should forget to love her child, it’s not possible that I should cease to love a soul that has become my child: “Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb? And even if she should forget, yet I won’t forget you” (see Is 49:15).

Mary is our mother, not according to the flesh, but by love. So it’s only the love that she bears us that makes her our mother. For this reason, someone has said, “She glories in being a mother of love, because she is all love towards us whom she has adopted for her children.” And who can ever tell the love that Mary bears us miserable creatures? —St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Glories of Mary

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .
What experiences in my life can I recall that clearly demonstrated my earthly mother’s strong love for me? Do those experiences help me to understand my heav- enly mother’s loving commitment to my present and eternal welfare?

CLOSING PRAYER
From a prayer of St. Alphonsus: Mary, my Mother, don’t abandon me. Never, never cease to pray for me, until you see me safe in heaven at your feet, blessing and thanking you forever.

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