The Mother

This book is titled "Th.e Mot.her" and written by Jos.eph Ca.rdinal Min.ds.enty and can be purchased here

As I read the book for the first time I will share passages I find particularly meaningful and if so moved, I'll share my own thoughts as well. My thoughts are in black and the book quotes are in red...Any highlighting is mine...

The field of public life and support of the family belongs to the man. The vocations of the woman is not in the realm of the mind but in the realm of the heart, the family home. Here she can be the helpmate of man, urging his spirit to nobler heights, forming and fashioning his heart. As bride and mother she reaches the sacred heights. After all, the most beautiful blossom and the most glorious crown of woman is the dignity of motherhood. This makes her queen, this makes her priestess of the great mystery. of life. Such a dignity is worthy of reverence. What approaches close to the sacred than reverential love?

This thought was well expressed by the husband of Miss Earhart when,meeting his wife after her record flight over the ocean said : " A tiny baby would have been preferable to this record. Had you died giving birth to a child, it would have been a more beautiful death than if you had found your grave in the waters of the ocean.:" --Modern woman has taken up every field of man's endeavor, but meanwhile she has forgotten one thing, how to be a wife and mother. And yet Josephoine Widmar exclaims in her psychological novel:"The body and soul of woman year for motherhood." Sigrid Undset has one of her heroines cry out: "I am a woman and so I must find my happiness in motherhood." Knauck Kahne expresses the same thought: " To be womanly, means to be motherly."

In the creation of our first parents God signified the duties which He was assigning to woman. He did not create the first woman from the head or foot of man. He fashioned her from man's side, close to his heart. She is not merely an instrument for the arbitrary use of man, she has the same human nature as he. She is called to be the helpmate of man, and chiefly to help him realize the blessing of God: "Increase and multiply." Her vocation is to help the temporal and eternal happiness of the family.




Does this sound old fashioned to you? Is your feminist side upset? Consider this next paragraph:

Those who hold the scepter of the world in their hands are those who give life to children. Woman can well afford to admit that she was not the architect of the grandiose, magnificent plan of St Peter's in Rome or of any other splendid cathedral. She has clothed with flesh something more magnificent, more beautiful than all the cathedrals int he world, mainly, an immortal soul.

True, mother works in the home, but her quiet labor radiates upon the entire nation. She passes on the entire treasure of culture from generation to generation. She builds up the future, and not merely the future of this earth: nay, her task reaches out into eternity, to the very heart of God.

Without her there can be no family, no home. Without her the strongest sources of human strength will disappear. Without her, goodness, love and mercy vanish. She is the sturdy staff upon which the wary pilgrim supports himself as he plods the dusty road of life. She is the unknown soldier of common everyday life. The hand that rocks the cradle holds the helm of the world. Everything that lives and dies on earth has it's origin in mother.

It sounds to me that this beautiful description of mother has been terribly lost today. Today a "career" is most important. "Where are you going to college?" This question was asked of me from freshman year on and it drove me nuts, today such importance is put on education. I ask where has education gotten the family? Are famlies better today with such education at our fingertips? Or have we educated ourselves on the non essential things and forgotten the vitally important tasks of being a wife and mother? Our society has SUFFERED from this elevation of education and loss of Motherhood.

More to come.....