One after the other we arrived, siblings, all nine of us (the tenth and eldest died in a sea accident years ago). We took turns to be beside her.
She smiled when I told her about the white roses that she unexpectedly brought me when, unwell for six months, I prayed a novena to St. Therese of Lisieux, and asked the saint as a sign of her favor for the appearance of roses. At another time I wanted to remind her of the morning when, for purposes of an essay I was writing, she demonstrated how to prepare native chicken soup the way Father liked it, but she had fallen asleep.
I felt particularly compelled to visit Mother in the hospital as often as I could, because, despite her age, she never failed to visit me during my own illness, and each time she would have something for me—fruit, holy pictures, ornamental plants, particularly a variety of camellia that grew wildly in the fields around our old house, whose fragrant white flowers Naning the hunchback picked every morning and peddled, and for which I had let on to her a longing. And, of course, the roses that I asked for from the Little Flower, as St. Therese is fondly called.
Likely as not, if anyone is asked to enumerate the traits of his ideal person, he will give a list of his mother’s good qualities. At least I would.
And I think Jesus did too. When told that his mother and brothers (actually, his cousins or relatives) were around, wanting to speak to him, he said, “Whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother." An indirect way of saying that Mary’s status as his mother stemmed first of all from her being obedient to his Father’s will, which she best demonstrated by saying yes to Gabriel’s invitation for her to become the mother of God ("Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”)
When Jesus announced the beatitudes, his guidelines for true happiness, in the process standing all worldly wisdom on its head, he could very well have been describing Mary. Mary was poor, she could offer only a pair of turtle doves instead of a year-old lamb at her purification after the birth of Jesus, and was homeless in later life, prompting Jesus before his death to entrust her to John’s care. Mary’s grief over Jesus’ sufferings and death was epic. Mary was gentle and submissive—at the wedding at Cana, when the wine ran out, and she told Jesus about it, she did not insist when he told her, “How does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.” Her hunger and thirst for righteousness is evident in her Magnificat, when she praised God for showing might with His arm, dispersing the arrogant of mind and heart, throwing down the rulers from their thrones, lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich away with nothing.
Mary knew persecution; she and Joseph had to take the infant Jesus to Egypt when Herod set his soldiers upon the babies two years of age and under in Bethlehem. As to being merciful and clean of heart and a peacemaker, surely, Mary possessed these qualities, too, she being God’s favored one.
My own mother has her defects and foibles. But for me they pale in comparison with the many things she did for us, her children, for which now I consider her the embodiment of goodness. For instance, when I was an infant and dying of pneumonia, on our way home from the doctor’s clinic, I expectorated so much that she ran out of rags to wipe off the phlegm with. Unabashedly, she removed her clothes and used them to keep me clean, and just walked home in her chemise with me in her arms.
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Source: Cebu Daily News
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