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MAY 11, 2003 Fourth Sunday of Easter
"I am the good shepherd {who} lays down his life for the sheep…"
-John 10: 11-18
GOD IS LIVING NEXT DOOR AS MY MOTHER
A young woman discovers that her elderly mother has taken on a new and unexpected role in her life.
"Mom has slowed down, is listening more than talking, being more than doing…"
"I cannot escape God because she lives next door to me. I get pulled into God's presence more often, more forcefully, more personally by my mother. She needs me. She thinks of me. She adores me. She feeds me. Such a mother, God."
"I perform all my usual techniques of resistance. Pretending I don't need love. Dredging up pathetic justifications for avoiding just her presence. Because she is getting old, I have to notice she will not always be here. And I resent the implication that I, too, am mortal and will one day decline. So I insist on our differences, especially the ones about my life being more important (in its ascendancy, as opposed to its demised). Who am I kidding?"
"She is irresistible. God and my mother. She is my best friend, my adviser (still), my spiritual buddy a few steps ahead on the path. She is my reminder of … the long view, of what's really real, and what matters. I can hardly bear to imagine life without her. So I assign myself the present homework of dropping all that negates, resists, or twists God's love into something else. I take up the assignment so I will be fully prepared (yeah, right) for the test of her eventual (seeming) absence, when only God remains.
Even if I wanted to forget about God (and who would I be then?), I cannot. Because she lives next door."
['God is Living Next Door as My Mother" by Ellen Anthony. Reprinted from Weavings: A Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life, January/February 2003, Volume XVIII, No. 1. Copyright 2003 by the Upper Room Ministries. Used with permission.]
CONNECTION: In honoring our mothers this day, we remember that God is present in the love and caring of mothers and fathers and family members and friends who love us unconditionally and completely - as God loves us. A parent's love for his/her children mirrors the love of the Good Shepherd for us: to love fully and totally, to love regardless of the cost, to love without limit, to love even though such love is not deserved or appreciated. Christ calls each one of us to imitate his loving servanthood in the image of the "Good Shepherd": to bring back the lost, the scattered and the forgotten; to enable people to move beyond their fears and doubts to become fully human; to willingly pay the price for justice and mercy for all members of the "one fold."
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