VATICAN CITY (CNS): The mothers of priests and seminarians deserve the thanks of the whole Church for raising their sons in the faith and supporting them in their vocations, prefect of the Congregation for Clergy Cardinal Mauro Piacenza said.
Writing on the January 1 feast of Mary, Mother of God, the cardinal said having a priest-son required a new form of motherhood, one that involved a “discreet, but very effective and invaluably precious accompaniment in prayer”.
Cardinal Piacenza’s letter was posted, in Italian, on the website of the clergy congregation.
When a man became a priest, he said, everyone in his family was touched and was called to a deeper conversion, but “unique and special are the spiritual consolations that come from having carried in your womb one who becomes a priest in Christ”.
Obviously, he said, seminary studies and priestly ministry often took a man further from home and from regular family life, but the physical separation was replaced by a closer spiritual bond.
“The experience of the Church teaches that the mother ‘receives’ her priest-son in a completely new and unexpected way, so much so that by the will of God she is called to recognise in the fruit of her womb a ‘father’, who is called to generate a multitude of brothers and sisters and accompany them to eternal life,” the cardinal wrote.
While “every mother of a priest is mysteriously a ‘daughter of her son’,” Cardinal Piacenza said, she also was called to continue offering him her maternal support, particularly through her prayers.
“Such a work of authentic support, always necessary in the life of the Church, seems even more urgent today – especially in the secularised West, which is awaiting and asking for a new and radical proclamation of Christ,” he said.
“The mothers of priests and seminarians truly represent an army that raises prayers and offerings to heaven from earth and, with even greater numbers, intercedes from heaven so that grace is poured out on the lives of holy pastors.”
