In what has become a hallmark of the millennial experience, things that were not controversial in our childhood are now considered contentious as we raise our own children: pronouns, gifted and talented programs, and first-place trophies, to name a few.
But in what would have been a surprise to my own mother, Mother’s Day has also become controversial.
For the past several years, it's become typical of major corporations to issue their patrons warnings ahead of their annual Mother’s Day marketing campaigns, informing them through email or social media that it is understandable if they pause notifications or subscriptions due to the “triggering” nature of the promotions and discounts.
Whether it’s virtue signaling or sincerely motivated, these companies work overtime in this season to avoid giving offense to women who desire to be mothers but who are not, those who do not wish to be mothers, and those who do not have a relationship with their mothers for a variety of reasons.
The Catholic world is not immune to the trend. For millennial and Gen Z women, it is now considered controversial to give mothers blessings on Mother’s Day.
I’d like to argue that it shouldn’t be.
Mother’s Day is annually celebrated on the second Sunday of May in the United States. For Catholics, it’s also a day on which we are obligated to go to church.
Typically, at the conclusion of that particular Sunday Mass, the priest will ask mothers in attendance to stand and receive a special blessing, which asks God to strengthen them, honor their sacrifices, and thank them for the gift of life and love. The prayer includes the living and the dead.
In recent years, there has been a movement, largely online, to ask priests to limit or stop offering the blessing (or at least the applause for moms) and, in its stead, inform their congregations of how painful it is for some women in attendance to have to withstand it.
This movement is born out of a good and holy desire to offer compassion and solidarity to women who have an unfulfilled desire for motherhood, such as those experiencing infertility or who are single but desire marriage.
The trouble, at least to me, is that it is now often seen as the only acceptable — nay, right and just — way to share in their cross.
I empathize with the instinct. I have written in these pages about the pain of infertility and have tried to shed light on the stories of women who silently suffer the often unseen or unacknowledged agony of being single longer than they want to be. The populations of both are growing at an exponential rate.
As a woman who did not get married until I was 34, I still remember sitting in the pew each year while my peers stood up for that blessing. The ache in my heart was so strong that I experienced physical pangs. And in the years in which I attended Mass on Mother’s Day with my terminally ill mom, my suffering on that day only intensified.
These experiences are real, and Catholics need to be attentive to them. Statistically speaking, the average Catholic parish will also have several post-abortive women in Mass on Mother’s Day, for whom that blessing might induce sorrow or regret. It is good for all of these women to know that they are seen and unconditionally loved, and Catholic churches should make use of parishioners’ creativity and charisms to address them in earnest.
But we still need to bless mothers on Mother’s Day. We do not need a new kind of mom guilt — one that insinuates that a woman should feel shame for being a mother, that her vocation is tainted because not all share it.
I can’t help but wonder if the controversy could be cleared up by explaining what kind of blessing this is and what it does.
The blessing does not signal that mothers are more valuable than other women. After all, it is not through any merit of their own that they have become mothers. It is only due to God’s providence that any of us exist, including our children.
Nor does the blessing confer some special or sacred character on mothers. Drawn from the Church’s “Book of Blessings,” it is considered an invocative blessing, simply asking God to bring some temporal or spiritual good to a mother. The Church has plenty of these available to all men, women, and children.
But mothers do need these kinds of prayers. I can tell you from firsthand experience.
Less than two months ago, I was lying on an emergency room bed, blood-soaked and hemorrhaging from post-partum complications, the cause of which was unclear. While radiologists and surgeons debated what kind of surgical intervention I needed, my nurses kept coming into my room to say that while they had never seen this volume of blood loss, I was not yet at a life-threatening stage because my body was mysteriously producing sufficient blood to replace it.
As I looked at my husband and infant across the room, it wasn’t a mystery as to why I was not yet in critical condition. I knew I had people praying for me.
And it was grace — perhaps from Mother’s Day blessings of years past — that gave me Christ’s peace and the assurance that if I didn’t make it, he would be with my husband and children.
During this year’s Mother’s Day blessing, I will be praying for mothers whose husbands or sons are on naval ships or military bases, who need this grace.
I will be praying for mothers in the NICU or the emergency room, managing the uncertainty of postpartum life, who need this grace.
I will be praying for a friend who lost her husband and two children in a car accident this year, who needs this grace to stay strong for her surviving child.
I will be praying for my deceased mother and grandmothers who are in need of grace for their heavenly arrival.
I will be praying for first-time mothers, who do not know if they will ever sleep again, for mothers who have experienced divorce, for single mothers who are managing the work of two adults, for mothers who cannot feed, clothe, or shelter their children — all of whom need grace for timely help, as St. Paul says.
And I will also be praying during Mass on Mother’s Day for women who desire children. I know that cross, even in part.
But it will not be because I have been shamed into it. Instead, I will pray for them because if God made any creatures capable of solidarity, it is women. Whether we are mothers or not, we have all been designed with the capacity to make room for the other.
And that is, one might say, a real blessing for us all.
