Mama Mary and My Mother

This article is actually a re-post from my other blog. I have written this on October 30, 2008. I am re-posting to honor my mother on Mother’s Day.

Today is the birthday of Mama Mary, the mother of Our Saviour Jesus Christ. The readings and gospel today never mentioned anything about the birth or the celebration of her birthday. But the whole Catholic Church is celebrating her birthday this day and I am not in the position to neither question the real date of her birth nor dig the roots as to who really knows when Mama Mary was born. My strong Catholic devotion assumes the sacredness of the Church teachings that questioning the truthfulness or falsity of what was taught in my religion class is out of my mind.

Unlike the other feasts celebrated in the Catholic Church, Mama Mary’s birthday need not be celebrated with a grandiose party –  contrary to my three-year old nephew’s belief that they should buy a cake, sing a birthday song and then make a wish before the candle is blown for Mama Mary’s birthday. My two sisters, niece, daughter and I celebrated her birthday in an extraordinary way, that is, by visiting my mother’s gravesite – weird but meaningful.

 Our mother may not have been like Mama Mary- in fact different in all aspects, but her sacrifices in raising raise her seven children is nothing more like to what Mama Mary went through. My mother endured relentlessly to give us all our needs, although we were not provided with all our wants, and had to sacrifice and forego her own material desires just to provide the necessities of her seven growing children. The virtues instilled and the values formed in our young minds were greatly credited to the disciplinary psyche of our mother who wished us all to be good persons. The image of Mama Mary constantly reminds me of the agonies, sacrifices, and hurts suffered by my strong-willed mother who, despite of it all, never showed her emotional distress to her children. The problems she encountered while battling the difficult life of raising a big family made her stronger and more mature. Every inch of complicated situation was faced with much dignity that made her stand tall with head high up, and such gave her the strength to face-off whatever problems that came her way. Her might was tested in the battlefield for many times and had won many of those including the most difficult battles of all, that is, having saved her own matrimony which was once had been attempted to be destroyed by a woman’s evil mind. Our mother’s ability to be triumphant over life’s complicatedness significantly enriched our minds not to be afraid of whatever tribulations that will come our way.

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