If one gets the chance to stand atop the Bernini colonnades of St. Peter’s Square, it’s delightful to discover that the hills and trees of the Roman horizon boast the color palette we see in the works of Raphael and Michelangelo. The soft, inviting pastel hues of pink and green and blue remind us of eternal things amid the passing.
Then, looking down on the square, one cannot help but study the rounded embrace of sturdy pillars and its continuance into the Via della Conciliazione, the great avenue that leads directly from the tomb of St. Peter out to, well, the whole world.
It looks very much like a womb — the basilica and surrounding buildings resemble nothing less than the miraculous interiors of a woman’s body: Here we encounter the inner workings that have received, and continue to receive, everything since the earliest days of a church that Scripture (and Christ himself) references as “bride” — the wisdom of doctors and philosophers, old and new; the fertile nucleus of a history that watches and waits and invites the seeds of faith to be delivered daily in the encounters of surprised converts and the awestruck prayers of baptized pilgrims, full of hope.
Gestated in ancient wisdom, beauty and truth, these are delivered back to the world, a people blessed and sent forth, passing through the exquisitely alive and enveloping clasp of the square, supported by the prayers of the saints who are poised above like ancestral godparents, as the newly (rarely perfectly) formed people of God go forth into the great, teeming planet, daughters and sons of antiquity and mystery.
The idea that the church is “the mother” of the faith is not new. Bolstered by the testimony of one of our earliest fathers, St. Cyprian, the Catechism of the Catholic Church perfectly describes the work of a mother, explaining, “The Church’s faith precedes, engenders, supports and nourishes our faith. The Church is the mother of all believers. ‘No one can have God as Father who does not have the Church as Mother.'”
The idea has legs extending through our history. Pope Leo XIII, in his 1891 encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” called the church the “common Mother of rich and poor … the common Mother of us all.” Pope Francis, during the Year of Faith, proclaimed “The church is our mother” at a weekly audience, saying, “If you go to the baptistery of St John Lateran … there is an inscription in Latin (reading): “Here is born a people of divine lineage, generated by the Holy Spirit who makes these waters life-giving; Mother Church gives birth to her children within these waves.”
He added, “A good mother helps her children to come of themselves. … The church, like a good mother, does the same thing: She accompanies our development by transmitting to us the Word of God, which is a light that directs the path of Christian life; she administers the sacraments. She nourishes us with the Eucharist, she brings us the forgiveness of God through the sacrament of penance, she helps us in moments of sickness. … The church accompanies us throughout our entire life of faith, throughout the whole of our Christian life.”
In its exposition of the lifelong depths of concern, nurturing, love, puzzlement, understanding, clemency and prayerful accompaniment, this is a description of motherhood that anyone who has experienced it, physically or spiritually, will recognize. It is also a beautifully stated, convincing argument that the Catholic Church is, indeed, mother to all the baptized.
Of course, mothers are imperfect, as Francis reminded his audience, and yet through the deep bonds of love, a child wants to forgive even her mistakes, her failures — and every mother knows failure. She fails in patience, in teaching well; sometimes she fails in nurturing and, most regrettably, even in love.
A friend with toddlers recently admitted, “I don’t know anything about motherhood except that I have a long way to go before I approach sainthood.”
Well, yes. Perhaps the church has a long way to go, too, but we are children who want to forgive. Over decades I’ve discovered to my surprise that motherhood is completely spiritual at its core. Sadly, in the spiritual I fail consistently. As do we all. Even our mother, the church.
As we ponder all mothers this week, including ourselves, let us do so with a willing mercy.
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