Walks and Talks

Making the most of our moments with mom

08/28/2019

Matthew 23:8-12 Jesus spoke to his disciples: "Do not be called 'Rabbi.' You have but one teacher, and you are all brothers. Call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven. Do not be called 'Master'; you have but one master, the Christ. The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted."

Boys and girls, please make the most of your moments with your mother, especially the private and personal talks you have occasionally. Some of you still have your mothers who are alive, but some have lost their moms who are in heaven. I share this homily with great love and compassion for those students and teachers who have lost their moms. Once a month I go home to Little Rock and stay with my parents, who are still in good health. I spend the night with them, celebrate Mass in their kitchen and then head to work on the marriage tribunal. If the weather is nice, my mother and I go for a walk after supper. I love those walks and those talks. Sometimes we talk about serious stuff, sometimes we talk about silly stuff, and sometimes we talk about how I am their favorite son. Just kidding. It doesn’t really matter what we talk about because I am talking to her, and that’s what really matters.

But it wasn’t always like that. When I was a teenager, I was embarrassed by my parents. They spoke with a thick Indian accent and I could tell people could not always understand them. Of course, I spoke perfectly. Yeah, right. It seemed like everything about my home country and my home culture from India embarrassed me: the food, the clothes, the music and the traditions. One time I even asked my mom to drop me off a block away from school so I would not be seen with her. Today I feel ashamed of how I treated my parents in those days, especially my mom, and I am trying to make up for lost time with those walks and talks. I am trying to make the most of my moments with my mom.

Today is the feast of St. Augustine, one of the greatest saints in the history of the Church. But he wasn’t always so saintly. For the first thirty years of his life, he was into sex, drugs and rock-n-roll, or their equivalent in the fourth century. But his mother Monica never stopped praying for him, crying for him, and loving him like our mothers do for us. Finally, he came to his senses and became a priest, and eventually the bishop of Hippo in northern Africa, what would be present-day Algeria. But after he converted, he tried to spend as much time with his mother as possible. St. Augustine was trying to make up for lost time like I do today.

One day Augustine visited Monica in Ostia, a city on the coast of Italy, about an hour’s drive from Rome, on the west coast, on the Tyrrhenian Sea. St. Augustine and his mother, St. Monica have a sublime conversation seated at a window overlooking a garden. He writes about it in his book called Confessions. He recalled: “The day was now at hand when she was to depart from this life…[and] she and I were standing alone, leaning at a particular window where there was a prospect over the garden within the house where we were staying at Ostia, Tiberius.” And what did these two saints, mother and son, discuss? Augustine goes on: “While we spoke, we also gazed upon wisdom with longing; we reached out and touched it as best we could, with every beat of our heart.” In other words, they talked about God and heaven and the life of the saints, like my mom and I sometimes do.

Augustine continues: “On the ninth day of her illness, when she was fifty-six and I was thirty-three, that devout and faithful soul of hers was set free from the body.” Then Augustine talks about the tears he wept for his mother, after the funeral, because he had tried to be strong and not cry during the funeral. He wrote: “I let flow my tears, which I had until that moment restrained, and let them fall as they would. I made them a bed to rest my heart upon…I wept so briefly for a mother, a mother who was, at least for the present, dead to my sight – and who had wept over me for so many years in the hope that I would come to live in God’s sight.” In other words, the son’s tears couldn’t compare to the mother’s tears. And I am sure Augustine wept partly because he did not make more of the moments he had with his mother. St. Monica’s feast day is August 27, and St. Augustine’s feast day is August 28, as if the Church is telling us to stay close to your mother, and make the most of those moments with her.

Boys and girls, your moms are not perfect people and they all make mistakes they regret. They are human beings, just like you and me. Nevertheless, our moms love us far more than we will ever know, at least until you become a mother yourself, or a priest or a bishop. They loved us for 9 months in the womb before we ever loved them, so they always maintain a 9-month head-start on us, and we will never catch up to their love. Make the most of your moments with your mom: go for a walk, talk about serious things, or silly things or saintly things. Or, as Coach Meares tells you to do at morning drop off when you get out of your car: “Turn around and tell your mother you love her.”

Praised be Jesus Christ!