Mothering Sunday

From the Manse

 

This coming Sunday, 22 March, is the Fourth Sunday of Lent. Exactly three weeks before Easter, it’s also Mothering Sunday. And while it is extremely important for all of us to take the opportunity to honour our mums, the original focus of the day itself was on the Church.

 

From the 16th century onwards, if at no other time of the year, the idea was that on this particular Sunday you would worship in the Church where you had been baptised. Failing this, you would go along to a service held in your nearest Cathedral. Known as your ‘Mother Church’, prayers would then be said acknowledging all those ways by which the Christian faith, just like our birth mums do, also seeks to nourish and protect us.

 

And just two examples of the sort of readings that might be used to help us think about the importance of the Church’s patience, care and love in our lives are

 

1 Thessalonians 2:7, in which we can read those words of St Paul:

 

“But we were gentle when we were with you, like a mother taking care of her children,” and

 

Matthew 23:37, which has Jesus saying:

 

“How many times I wanted to put my arms around all your people, just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.”

 

A holiday, and often the only day on which whole families were able to meet, the usual restrictions of Lent would be lifted, and just one of the ways by which the festival could then be celebrated was with a Simnel Cake. Decorated on top with a number of balls of marzipan, as well as representing Jesus and his disciples, these also came to be understood as a symbol of family unity.

Friends, there’s certainly never been a time like this in my lifetime, when – unable due to coronavirus to attend any Church at all for services of worship at the moment – it’s so important for us nonetheless to be able to think of ourselves as one big family – united, and together under God, who is Our Father but Our Mother too.

 

God bless, Jerry Eve x

 

 

Page last updated: Sunday 29th March 2020 12:45 AM
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