Nourish and Nurture

Continuing Jesus’ maternal ministry in the Church

05/12/2024

Mk 16:15-20 Jesus said to his disciples: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned. These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons, they will speak new languages. They will pick up serpents with their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” So then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God. But they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs.

Doctors have discovered that human eyesight develops gradually. When a baby is born, for example, it can only perceive objects about 8 to 10 inches away from its face. That also happens to be exactly the distance between a baby’s face and his mother’s face while breast-feeding. A very special – and in some ways an unbreakable – bond is created between the baby and its mother while nursing.

Not only is the baby nourished physically with mother’s milk, it is nurtured emotionally by learning to trust in his or her mother’s love. The little baby begins to believe: my mother will always be here for me. That is why Isaiah writes rhetorically speaking for God: “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget you, I will never forget you” (Is 49:15). All this is pre-programmed into the tiny baby’s heart while he breast-feeds and can only see 8 to 10 inches and beholds his mother’s face.

This nurturing and nourishing relationship between mother and baby can also help us understand today’s feast of the Ascension. How so? Well, since God had already compared himself to a loving mother back in the book of Isaiah, it should not be a stretch to say the way Jesus interacts and instructs his disciples bears some striking similarities to a mother and baby, too.

For example, Jesus feeds – practically nurses – his apostles with his own Body and Blood in the Eucharist, like a mother feeds her baby with her own body. Jesus teaches his disciples to trust him and that he will never abandon them, like a mother is always there for her baby. In a sense, for three years Jesus’ face had been very close to the apostles, easily visible, up-close and personal, like the 8 to 10 inches between a baby and its mother’s face.

But at the Ascension Jesus is taken up into heaven and the apostles will have to carry on Jesus’ maternal ministry by, as he charges them in the gospel: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.” Then he commands them to baptize, to lay hands on the sick, and to drive out demons. Jesus was using symbolic language to refer to the sacraments of baptism, anointing of the sick, and reconciliation, where we drive out demons of sin.

I remember Msgr. Hebert, my first pastor, said that whenever a baby cried as he poured the water over its head during a baptism, he remarked: “That was the evil spirits coming out.” By the way, we hear a lot of evil spirits coming out at Mass, too! And of course, nowhere does the Church carry out this maternal ministry of Jesus more intimately and closely than when a priest distributes Holy Communion. A person’s face and a priest’s face are about 8 to 10 inches apart at that moment as Jesus feeds his people, his children, with his own Body.

This is Mother’s Day weekend here in the United States and we rightly celebrate our beloved mothers. We owe so much to our mothers that we really cannot repay them or tell them “thank you” or “I love you” enough. We cannot even imaging some of their excruciating sacrifices, like childbirth. But we still have to try with roses, and chocolates and phone calls, dinners and spa days.

My parents now live in Springdale so they are close to my brother, Paul. But I go up to Springdale every Friday to visit them. And my mother is almost as excited to see me as she is to see my dog, Apollo! Just kidding…sort of. I have learned so much from my mother: especially from those early days when she nursed me at her breast, and even today as she beautifully embodies joy, grace, dignity, wisdom, faith, and above all, tender love.

On a natural level, my mother did for me what Jesus did for his apostles during his earthly life. She taught me a mother’s love, how to nourish but also how to nurture. And in that way, although she didn't know it, she also prepared me to become a priest, because that was is precisely what I do on a sacramental level: nourish and nurture my spiritual children. Thank you, mom, you were the first to teach me how to be a decent man and a dedicated priest.

Praised be Jesus Christ!