The Church as Mother

Today is the solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul, apostles. As I read the entry for the feast in Divine Intimacy by Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen I was struck by two oft-repeated quotes: "He cannot have God as Father who does not have the Church for Mother" (St. Cyprian, † 258) and the dying words of St. Teresa of Jesus, reformer of my Carmelite order: "I am a daughter of the Church."

I don't feel like I'm going far out on a limb to say that in this generation, we are undergoing a shift in what it means in lived experience, and subsequently in Christian understanding, to have the Church for Mother. At the time and context that Fr. Gabriel wrote (as a Carmelite priest and academic in Rome in the 1940s), one gets the distinct flavor that to have the Church for Mother involves being a faithful, fully-initiated member of the Roman Catholic Church. And he is not wrong.

The Second Vatican Council had not yet happened, but when it did, it also did not pronounce Fr. Gabriel wrong is his view. But it certainly did bid faithful, fully-initiated Roman Catholics to lift up their eyes and take in a broader view of what it means, that we do not have God as Father who do not have the Church for Mother.

If we understand "church" as a juridical, political term that specializes in the observable external conditions that result in belonging, we miss dimensions of the words Father and Mother. I am a mother. My older child entered our family through the legal process of adoption, after he had called me Mama for three years. My younger child grew within me in the natural way. When the midwife handed her to me, her gaze penetrated mine with a knowing that was expanding, not new. Interestingly, we had finalized my son's adoption 15 hours before the midwife handed me my daughter. Legally, in one 24-hour period, I suddenly was the mother of two children. Strip away the growth dynamic, the nurturing, the bonding, the healing, the life of the matter, and this legal statement is what you are left with.

Drop a newborn and an almost four year old child into a new juridical arrangement with strangers (who may or may not have the wherewithall to provide for their human needs), and what do you have?

You have the the vision of the Church that the Second Vatican Council saw was in urgent need of expansion. It calls us to take a deeper look at what happens when being a faithful, fully-initiated Roman Catholic goes right.

There is a community where the love of God is made manifest. The truth of the gospel is spoken. We are told from Divine Revelation the truth about who we are, about who God is, about how sin is the cause of our brokenness, about how God's love is the cause of our salvation, about Jesus as the price of our redemption, about His act of love and obedience that opens heaven and that calls all people to follow Him and to share in His mission to announce this plan of salvation. The very dynamism of the gospel preached and responded to creates missional communities. And miraculously, because the source of these communities is the one life of God there is unity as each is united with the Lord who calls and empowers and sends and is preached. Those who have answered the call of Jesus share the call. They reproduce. There is a life dynamic. It nurtures, bonds, heals. This is why we call the Church our Mother when God is our Father. We receive new life.

Roman Catholics who get uptight about juridical belonging tend to have forgotten or ignored the life-giving dynamics of the Church's maternal nature to their own detriment, and the detriment of those they affect. It's a messy process for uptightness to decompress, recognize its own need, acknowledge the need of others. It's a death to self that can feel like the world, safety, right and good being destroyed before one's very eyes. But in truth, it is salvation. It is the love of God breaking through. It will be messy. Motherhood is messy. Family life is messy. Messy is necessary for real life and healing, and varying levels of messy can all be endured.

Enough of "failure to thrive" Christians. Enough of orphaned believers weighed by a sense of lacking belonging, siblings, nurture. Enough of harsh, one-sided law lovers.

I am a daughter of the Church. I draw my life from her. Let us drink deeply from the purity of Christ so that His living water wells us within us for the salvation of all.