Mother and Holy Spirit

Mother is the epitome of love. It starts with a woman falling in love with a man. Then giving birth to children and bringing them up in a family, a woman becomes a mother with irresistible love for her family. Fired with love, a mother delights in undertaking sacrifices for her family. When she herself was a baby or a child, everything was centred on herself. That’s how we all start our lives. Now that this child has grown up to become a mother, it is no more selfishness or self-centredness that guides her life; she finds delight and meaning in self-sacrifice instead. Falling in love and then staying in that love is the foundation of the human life, and thus we attain the fullness of life. The fruits of love experienced in a family can be expanded by the siblings and other fellow human beings. The wider the range of your self-less love, the greater the fullness of your life. Jesus, bringing the love of the Father, wanted all human beings to fall in love and stay in love. To aid us in our pursuit for the fullness of life through self-sacrificing love, Jesus promised an advocate, the Holy Spirit. Just like a mother would bring up a newborn through all stages of development to adulthood, the Holy Spirit is with us to help from our infancy in faith life to the fullness of our life.

     The Spirit of God, the Spirit of love and care, is poured on us at our Baptism and at the reception of other sacraments, but in a special way in Confirmation.  Let us rejoice over the love of the Father, the Holy Spirit, that is nurturing us.

    But the idealised ‘love’ need not be the experience of everybody. On reflection one may find that wherever love was lost, and life is less than full, and it started with the loss of the friendship. Somewhere in the process of decision making, it might have been made with selfish motives rather than self-sacrifice. Don’t get me wrong; I am not accusing all parties of broken marriages and lost friendships guilty of such a failure. In most cases it may be one of the parties who caused damage in the first place, and it might have been sometimes irreparable. In such cases it is important to find other avenues where self-sacrifice can be exercised, and love expressed. Most of all it is our trust in the counsel of the Holy Spirit and our fellowship with God through Jesus is what makes life lived to the fullest.