Classic Catholic

Are you my mother?
P.D. Eastman wrote a wonderful children's picture book called Are You My Mother? in which a little bird who fell out of his nest goes around asking cows and steam shovels and such if they are his mother. It is fun, and it is in Spanish as well.

At any rate, one thing I thought about at today's Mass today was that the primary maternal image in both the Old and New Testament is not God (although there are some maternal comparisions, as in Is. 49), but Jerusalem. Jerusalem is our Mother, as it says in Isaiah 66:

Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad because of her, all you who love her; Exult, exult with her, all you who were mourning over her! Oh, that you may suck fully of the milk of her comfort, That you may nurse with delight at her abundant breasts! For thus says the LORD: Lo, I will spread prosperity over her like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing torrent. As nurslings, you shall be carried in her arms, and fondled in her lap; As a mother comforts her son, so will I comfort you; in Jerusalem you shall find your comfort.

Like a good father, the LORD comforts us by giving us a Mother! This is confirmed by St. Paul in Galatians:

But the Jerusalem above is freeborn, and she is our mother. For it is written: "Rejoice, you barren one who bore no children; break forth and shout, you who were not in labor; for more numerous are the children of the deserted one than of her who has a husband."