The gift of a mother's love

(OSV News) -- Perhaps more has been written about motherhood than on any other subject. Given the dignity and importance of motherhood, this is both understandable and justifiable. Nonetheless, more will continue to be written about motherhood because its depth can never be exhausted.

The eminent theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar opens the third volume of his "Explorations in Theology" with this intriguing sentence: "The little child awakens to self-consciousness through being addressed by the love of his mother." From a biological point of view, the child's parents account for his existence. But the child's awareness that he is a unique self, von Balthasar explains, is the work of the mother.

How does she do this? If I may borrow the "I-thou" terminology of Martin Buber, the mother is the "thou" who, through her tender love, awakens the "I" of the child to self-consciousness. The child becomes aware that he is a partner in a love-to-love relationship. The mother's love elicits a response that is the child's love. The child's response is spontaneous. He does not consider whether to respond to his mother's love with love or something else. His response is antecedent to any reflection. His core nature as a being of love, one created by a loving God, is touched.

His response is a pure indication of his nature. He responds with love because his mother's gift of love is not something that he can refuse. Just as the sun entices green growth, the mother's love summons forth the child's love, thus completing the "I-Thou" bond.

But there is something far more profound that occurs in the mother-child relationship. As von Balthasar states, the mother's love is delivered as a "lightning flash of the origin with a ray so brilliant and whole that it also includes a disclosure of God."

This helps to explain what Pope St. John Paul II meant when he remarked that "an ounce of mother is worth a ton of priests."

God has an "I-Thou" relationship with man. However, the adult response to God's love usually requires reflection and decision-making. But the early loving response of the child to his mother's love is something that the adult can build on. Along with mother's milk, the mother is awakening in her child a sense of God.

The child interprets his mother's smiling and her whole gift of self as coming from another, thereby distinguishing the "thou" of the mother from the "I" of the child. In this way, the love-to-love bond is achieved. The child responds to his mother's love with love of his own, thus awakening him to the realization, however dim, that he is made to love. This is a moment that is central and sacred to human beings. It is their origin and starting point. It is more fundamentally humanizing than any other human relationship.

A British poet by the name of Anne Ridler, who at one time served as a secretary for T.S. Eliot, authored 11 volumes of poetry over a 50-year span. A mother to two sons and as many daughters, she penned a number of poems that reveal her own acute sensitivity to the mother-child relationship. In "Choosing a Name," she beautifully expresses the mother-child relationship to which von Balthasar alludes, where generous love embraces receptive child:
"Frail vessel, launched with a shawl for sail, / Whose guiding spirit keeps his needle-quivering / Poise between trust and terror, / And stares amazed to find himself alive; / This is the means by which you say I am ..."

As Ridler implies, love summons "trust," whereas its absence suggests "terror." Motherhood is the gift of self that summons a loving response that requires no deliberation but comes straight from the heart. It is an example and prototype that we can never exhaust but must continually honor.