Crucifixion amnesia: left out on Mother's Day

Christian Century, May 7, 1997 by Mary T. Stimming

On Mother's Day I mourn my mother's untimely death. On Mother's Day I grieve my inability to bear children. On Mother's Day I need the comfort, strength and challenge of my faith--as well as the company of believers. On Mother's Day I will not attend mass.

I am not alone in my decision to avoid worship services on Mother's Day. Friends who have buried their mothers or who struggle to come to terms with their childlessness are making the same choice. As one whose heart is filled with sorrow on this day, I understand. As a theologian, I am deeply troubled.

Christianity centers on Christ's resurrection and crucifixion. But on at least two days of the year the church's recollection of crucifixion tends to dissolve into a mist of superficiality and sentimentalism. Although there are undoubtedly other occasions, the two prime examples of this crucifixion amnesia are Mother's Day (which is not a Christian feast day) and Christmas. I am not denying that there is much to celebrate on these days; I am not suggesting that the overall tone of these liturgies should not be joyous. I am, however, lamenting the fact that we fail to recognize the complex realities of life that make these two days especially difficult and distressing. Our failure to acknowledge pain keeps many away from church on these days.

Although my reflections are drawn from a Roman Catholic context, Protestant friends say that their experience echoes my own. With a little sensitivity and a little theological insight, however, this failing could be easily remedied.

With respect to Mother's Day, liturgical "sins of commission" deter many from attending. Typical rituals enacted during mass or worship include inviting mothers to stand, distributing corsages or flowers to mothers, and presenting them with special poems or presents. These express, rightly, the assembly's gratitude for mothers.

But imagine how these rituals are received by the couple that has buried a child or experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth; the single person who longs for a spouse and children; the woman who has undergone an abortion or placed a child for adoption; the child who has buried a mother or is witnessing a mother's illness; the mother who is alienated from her children or the child estranged from his or her mother; the stepmother who has not yet found her place in the family or the mother not awarded parental custody. For these people, Mother's Day rituals accentuate the sense of loss. If we could acknowledge their losses in some fashion, they could brave these rituals--not without pain, but with the pain placed in a context of care and support. It is the imbalance that prompts many of us to stay home from church.

In addition to honoring and rejoicing in mothers, the liturgy can acknowledge and comfort those at the edges of this joy. For Catholics, this could be done without artifice by drawing on the resources of Marian devotion. Mother's Day falls in May, the month of Mary, and there are events in her 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? The Pieta complements the more familiar images of Madonna and child. In it the cruciform realities that haunt the mother-child relationship are given expression and spiritual focus. Together these images allow for the complexity of the maternal--the serenity and the agony, sweet attachment and anguished separation.

At all Christian services on Mother's Day, sermons and prayers of petition should proclaim not only God's gracious care of mothers and children but also God's tender concern for the barren and the orphan. Psalm 139's powerful rebuke to the facile equation of God's love with a mother's love should inform the service.

The pain of many at Christmas services is occasioned more by sins of omission than of commission. It is not so much the creche or the carols that sting; it is the exclusion of tears and terrors, the failure to incorporate any notice of heartache. Although this failure is (one trusts) inadvertent, it is not experienced as such by those in distress. They may see it as an intentional denial of their situations.

For many, Christmas is a bleak season. The heightened focus on family, friends and frivolity accentuates the lack thereof in many persons' lives. The widower whose wife was the spirit of the season, the woman diagnosed with breast cancer and the child struggling to come to terms with the first Christmas since his parents' divorce are among those who approach Christmas with trepidation. What a shame that they so often find in the services not solace but further cause for anguish.

The Christmas story points to dark realities. As New Testament scholar Raymond Brown reminds us, the crib lies under the shadow of the cross. Those who are distressed at Christmas are justified in asking why these realities are banished from worship. Why do our liturgies excise these elements and ignore their significance? The story of Christmas details numerous crises: Joseph's sense of betrayal, the threat of divorce, the arduous journey the lack of hospitality, the crude circumstances of the birth, the danger posed to the child's life. Any of these could provide thematic resources for the liturgy.