Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Francis Beckham, OHC
The Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 10, 2026
Let us pray.Holy and Loving God,
We give thanks for all the women in our lives who have shown us your love.
For those who have nurtured and inspired us,
for those who have taught and mentored us,
for those who have respected and befriended us.
Bless abundantly, we pray, all who are mothers to your people.
May we also show your maternal love to those who walk life’s path with us, today, and in the years to come.
We ask these things through Jesus Christ, who dwells in and with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.
On behalf of everyone who has a mother, I’d like to wish all you moms a happy and blessed Mother’s Day, and to say “thank you” for everything you do.
I think Mother’s Day is a wonderful occasion to mark this last Sunday of Easter before the Ascension. Today, I’m put in mind of one Mother’s Day in particular: Sunday, May 14, 1989, to be exact. On that sunny, long-ago spring morning, I made my First Holy Communion. It was the first time I received Jesus sacramentally under the forms of bread and wine.
As part of the special day, my fellow first-communicants and I were surrounded by our entire church family, as well as legions of relatives including, naturally, our mothers. We gathered around the altar, received the Eucharist, and then sang songs honoring the mother of Jesus and all of us, the Blessed Virgin Mary. Afterwards, there were cake and way too many pictures in the parish hall, and each of us received a rosary and our very own Saint Joseph’s Children’s Missal, both of which I still happen to have.
And, while amid the joyful celebrations, I remember basically understanding what the day meant – that Jesus was now present within me – what my eight-year-old self couldn’t quite yet understand was that I was now also present in Jesus.
“You in me, and I in you,” Jesus says in today’s Gospel reading. It’s part of Jesus’ message to the disciples about the need for him to leave in order to be more present to them. This seems a little paradoxical, though. How can leaving someone help them be more together? Well, don’t worry. Like any good mom, Jesus knows what’s best for us; just trust, and it’ll eventually all make sense.
This discourse takes place within chapter fourteen of Saint John’s Gospel, where Jesus is preparing the disciples for what’s about to happen; namely, his passion and death, followed by his resurrection and ascension, and finally the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Liturgically speaking, this reading fits a little bit differently into our timeline, since having already passed through Lent, Holy Week, and most of Eastertide during the past three months, only the Ascension and Pentecost remain for us at this point. But in both the disciples’ case and ours, I think Jesus’ message is essentially this: “I’ve taught you everything you need to know; now, it’s time for you to start doing for yourselves. If we all stay together here in this little group, the message of God’s love will never be proclaimed to anyone else. And I need you to proclaim that message to everyone, everywhere. It’s the whole reason I came to you in the first place!”
This is something important that every parent, teacher, coach, and even novicemaster, understands. The whole point of investing time and attention into those placed in our care is to help them grow in understanding and confidence so they can become more fully themselves. And while it’s natural to want to protect and nurture, there comes a time when continuing to do so in the same way as before becomes counterproductive.
As people mature, they must be set free to grow their gifts through experiences beyond what current configurations permit. Jesus knows this firsthand, thanks to his own upbringing. Think of Mary at the Finding in the Temple. Although she treasured up that experience in her heart, she and Joseph make it clear to the twelve-year-old Jesus that he needs to come home with them.
Yet, by the time we arrive at the Wedding Feast in Cana, we see that their relationship has adjusted. Mary is now clearly supporting, rather than supervising, her adult son in his new role – a role she, more than anyone else, helped prepare him for. And it’s within this truth that the paradox of ‘leaving to grow closer’ begins resolving itself.
In his death, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus isn’t actually leaving at all. In fact, he tells us, he’s really going to be more present now than ever before. “I will not leave you orphaned,” he promises. “I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.”
So there it is. Instead of being just one person walking around first-century Palestine, Jesus becomes all of us, wherever and whenever we are. Like an unsure young adult learning to navigate the world on their own, or a disciple struggling to adapt their ministry to new and
challenging realities, the time has also come for us to start putting Jesus’ lessons into practice, proclaiming the Good News of God’s merciful love to everyone, and inviting those who are lost and discarded into relationship with God and one another.
If this seems daunting – especially in light of the world’s disordered structures and systems that reject mercy and reward greed and violence – we need only remember Jesus’ own assurance: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments … They who have my commandments and keep them (that’s us!) are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.” So, if we do as Jesus teaches, rather than as the world does, we’ll have all we need to reveal Christ to others and to encounter Christ in them.
On this Mother’s Day and Sixth Sunday of Easter, I invite us all to reflect on the ways God’s love has been shown to us through all the ‘mothers’ who have touched our lives, regardless of whether they happen to be related to us by blood or not: Those women who have nurtured, taught, mended, supported, corrected, forgiven, and believed in us.
Like the disciples, may each of us take what we have learned from our mothers and from Jesus to show forth God’s love in our own, special ways. And as we come forth to receive Jesus in the Holy Communion, whether for the first time or the ten-thousandth, may we do so knowing that Jesus is truly present around and in us, and we, together, are present in him. Amen.
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