A quick thought came to me during mass this past weekend. The following snippet of Scripture is taken from Sunday's second reading. It's from St. Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians (2:7b-8):
Rather, we were gentle among you, as a nursing mother cares for her children.
With such affection for you, we were determined to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our very selves as well, so dearly beloved had you become to us.
The "we" in the first verse are the trio of authors of this Letter: even though the lectionary has readers at mass announce that this is the "First letter of St. Paul to the Thessalonians", and the letter is pretty widely acknowledged among scholars as being genuinely written by Paul, the text itself identifies three authors: Paul, Silvanus (aka Silas) and Timothy.
So I am not sure which of the three thought of the simile proposed in v. 7, but that's what I wish to mention here: that Paul and his band of missionaries came to the Thessalonians "as a nursing mother cares for her children."
That's a pretty wonderful image in its own right. But until I heard the passage proclaimed this past Sunday, I hadn't appreciated that the image is (possibly) extended in v. 8: "we were determined to share with you...our very selves as well." Because of course, that is what a nursing mother shares with her infants: the act of nursing is, quite literally, a sharing of herself.
When that thought struck me during mass, it occurred to me that the simile of the nursing mother is applicable to God, with the church as the mediator; and the Eucharistic resonances were immediately apparent to me. But amid the plenitude of metaphors one hears for the Eucharist - the sacred repast, the unbloody sacrifice, the medicine of immortality, and so on - I rarely (or never) hear of this maternal imagery of a mother nursing her infant being proposed for the Eucharist.
I think the American church could do worse than to use this brief simile as a starting point for its Eucharistic Revival. Do we dare to use such feminine imagery for God? And can we bear portraying ourselves, not as mighty culture warriors a la that recent article in America, but as utterly dependent infants?
I like like reading in Thessalonians too. With all the wars and political turmoil in the world, we are not okay. The ones who are not bleeding and wounded are stressed and tired. We need to set the "mighty warrior" thing aside for a bit, and turn to God as our nurturing parent. We are utterly dependent on God whether we want to admit it or not.
ReplyDeleteI like your idea of using the image of the gentle care of God as a starting point of the Eucharistic revival. We do call the Eucharist the bread of life, nourishment for our souls and bodies.
It's a nice passage to contemplate at any time, but good luck selling it to the American He-Man with his AR-15s.
ReplyDeleteMaternal images of holy sacrifice certainly resonate with Catholics in various images of the Virgin Mary. In their haste to condemn notions of Mary as co-redemptor, Protestants have lost a lot of the divine feminine. And I think they are poorer for it.
Side note: I read a few days ago that the DNA of fetuses often melds with some cells in the mother and remain there for her entire lifetime, even if the fetuses miscarried as early as six weeks.
Katherine might understand the biology of it better, but it gave me great comfort in this season of All Souls to think that I still carry that basic material of *all* my children. And, of course, we all carry DNA from both our parents.
As an idea for contemplation, we might think that as our children are embedded in us and we are embedded in our mothers, we are all embedded in God, inextricably linked with the Creator, for as long as we live.
"...we might think that as our children are embedded in us and we are embedded in our mothers, we are all embedded in God, inextricably linked with the Creator, for as long as we live."
DeleteThat's a beautiful thought, Jean. I had read that thing, too, about how mothers carry some DNA from their children. I don't know how it all works. But we know that we carry them in our hearts, so it isn't so surprising that we carry part of them in our cells too.
Psalm 131 was the responsorial for Sunday, which also fits into the maternal, nurturing aspect of God. It was a different musical setting, but it brought back a memory of a school Mass in which my niece, who was a 5th grader at the time, sang Christopher Walker's "As a Child Rests". She was a solo cantor and did a beautiful job for only 10 years old.
ReplyDeleteHenry Nouwen is one of my favorite spiritual writers. Years ago I read his reflection on Rembrandts Prodigal Son painting. His understanding of God as both father and mother has always stayed with me.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bridges-across.org/ba/nouwen.htm
Nouwen used to show up in the Magnificat daily devotional from time to time. Interesting insight about the hands in Rembrandt!
DeleteThe entire book is worth reading. Several other interesting insights, some of which require finding a really high quality photo of the painting. He sat in a chair at the museum studying it for hours, over a period of several days.
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