Annunciation, Rogier Van der Weyden (1400-1464)
CHRISTIAN motherhood is the noblest institution of motherhood that has ever existed. It lacks for nothing important and thus is perfection realized. This will always be true, even if every church in this world were somehow to shut its doors and people turned to modern versions of the catacombs.
Non-Christian mothers often benefit unconsciously from the ideals of the Christian institution of motherhood, which involves monogamy and the highest respect for and protection of maternal effort. It is the legacy they have inherited and they are often profoundly indifferent to and ignorant of the reasons why polygamy, repudiation of wives and concubinage no longer exist, at least not in their ancient forms. These non-Christian mothers may love their children as much, but their love is a seed that falls on less fertile ground. The same is true of the pseudo-Christian mother, of whom there are countless many.
The Christian mother is not satisfied to prepare her child for this world — for friends, school, college, marriage and life in general. Her project extends into eternity. Thus she possesses a certain detachment that makes her authority over her children especially powerful and makes her less unsettled by their storms, whims or unpopularity by the world’s standards. For the pagan mother, her life is a success if her child is well-liked.
The Christian mother is conscious of supernatural forces pitted against her. Thus she does not have the utopian expectation that she will feel fulfilled every moment of the day or that her marriage will be one long romantic episode. The devil loves nothing so much as to destroy a mother’s attachment to her domestic society. He will dedicate his greatest arts to engage in conversation with a woman alone in her home, faced with tedium and dreary poverty. He loves to tell her that real life is elsewhere, that all this is beneath her, that she was meant to do more impressive things. The Christian mother knows she is embattled and responds to these assaults heroically, with hope, prayer and confidence in God. She is his handmaid. She must cultivate tenderness and militance and thus her work is very difficult. To defend the home requires every aspect of her being: body, intellect, and soul. Feminists didn’t flee the home because it was easy. They fled it because it was hard.
Christian motherhood was born on the day the Angel Gabriel approached Mary. “Blessed art thou among women,” he said, as he knelt before the humble Jewish girl. Paintings of the Annunciation, such as this one by Rogier Van der Weyden, often depict Mary as gravely conscious of her responsibility. If she had not at that moment felt the immensity of God’s love, she would have been crushed by the awareness of her own inferiority.
On that day, which Catholics honor today with the Feast Of Our Lady Virgin and Queen, the exalted institution of Christian motherhood was born, and that birth led to the greatest of civilizational achievements, to levels of art and learning this world had never seen. Behind the greatest institutions of the West stands the Christian mother and her wisdom. That day was just yesterday. Today, in this materialistic and Vitalistic world, the Christian mother lives in the reverberations of that moment. She willingly denies herself many of the rewards of the feminist economy. And those rewards are undeniably good in and of themselves. She gives up status, potentially interesting diversions and material gain that would no doubt benefit her children to participate in a higher project, an undertaking which is in no way guaranteed of success.
The Christian mother cannot help but be gravely conscious, as Mary was on that day, of what she has lost and what lies before her. But even in the heart of darkness, her soul doth magnify the Lord.
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