Helping your Pastor Understand the Significance of Mother’s Day

Many churches make a big deal about Mother’s Day. One year, when my husband and I were deep in the throes of infertility, we attended our church’s Mother’s Day service. The pastor invited all the mothers to come to the front and receive a carnation. Steams of women headed to the front of the church while I sat, still as a stone, in the nearly empty pew, trying not to burst into tears.

Sunday, May 14, is one of the most emotionally and spiritually difficult days of the year for women who want to be mother’s but aren’t. Not only is it painful for women who experience fertility challenges, but it’s a difficult day for women whose children are living in foster or adoptive homes, women who have lost a child to miscarriage or death, for women who have lost their mothers, for single women who yearn for marriage and children, and for mothers whose children have strayed far from the values their parents hold dear.

Many clergy are unaware of the ways in which Mother’s Day affects some of the women in their congregation. But once they understand how difficult this day and all the accompanying hoopla is for women, clergy may make efforts to include those who are grieving.

The week before Mother’s Day, I e-mail my church’s pastoral staff a reminder to acknowledge women who are waiting to become moms and women who have experienced the loss of a child during a pastoral prayer. One year, I even wrote out a short prayer that they could use, as is, or incorporate into a longer pastoral prayer. My pastor used the prayer during the service.

Mary Stimming, a Catholic theologian, notes that Mother’s Day falls in May, the month of Mary. In her article, “Crucifixion Amnesia,” Stimming points out the events in Mary’s life that “lend themselves to an embrace of sorrow and suffering: her confusion at the annunciation, her dismay at her son’s public ministry, her humiliation and grief at the foot of the cross. Why does the sword that pierces her heart receive no notice on Mother’s Day?”

Stimming asserts that all Christian services on Mother’s Day “should proclaim not only God’s gracious care of mothers and children but also God’s tender concern for the barren and the orphan.”

This Mother’s Day, I encourage you to thank God for the one who gave you life, to reach out in love and compassion to a woman who struggles with loss and grief, and to urge your clergyperson to honor mothers and those who long to be mothers during your church’s Mother’s Day celebration.

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