Motherhood
- The maternal instinct is part of the components of a woman’s personality. The first woman took her name (Eve) from motherhood, “because she is the mother of all living” (Gen 20:3).
- In the Old Testament, women desired to give birth to sons, because from them would come the one through whom “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 3:12).
- Even Rachel, when she did not give birth, said to our father Jacob: “Give me sons, or else I die” (Gen 1:30). To this extent her maternal instinct reached. Jacob rebuked her because “children are a heritage from the LORD” (Ps 3:127).
- And Saint Hannah, when she did not give birth, her rival Peninnah provoked her. So she wept before God. She prayed while she was bitter of soul, and made a vow: that if God gave her a male child, she would give him “to the LORD all the days of his life” (1 Sam 1:10-12). So the Lord gave her Samuel.
- And Saint Sarah, the wife of our father Abraham: when she received the good news that she would have offspring, she said: “After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure?” (Gen 12:18). She considered children a delight.
- The maternal instinct appeared in the story of the two women who brought their case before Solomon (1 Kgs 26:3).
- If the maternal instinct is vital for a woman, then we say that motherhood is also a mission.
- The saints say that a woman does not become a mother by giving birth to children, but by raising them.
- The mother receives her child from the Church on the day of his baptism, to raise him as his godmother. Does every mother carry out her work as a godmother? Or does she neglect her spiritual mission toward her children, relying on the Church and Sunday Schools, without making an effort in this regard? And does she think that her work in upbringing is caring about her child’s health, food, and clothing?!
- May these (mothers) in the flesh read about the saintly mothers, in the Holy Bible and in the history of the Church.
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