Quotes - Spiritual Motherhood
Hear and understand, my smallest and dearest son, that what is alarming and afflicting you is nothing. Do not let your countenance or your heart be disturbed. Do not fear this illness or any other illness or suffering. Am I, your Mother, not here? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the folds of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? What more do you need? - Our Lady of Guadalupe to St. Juan Diego
God the Son wishes to form himself, and, in a manner of speaking, become incarnate every day in His members through His dear Mother. - St. Louis de Montfort
Dear Blessed Mother, lend me Your heart. I look for it each day to pour my troubles into. - St. Gemma Galgani
Every vocation to the priesthood comes from the heart of God, but it passes through the heart of a mother. - St. Pius X
On one occasion I saw a servant of God in the immediate danger of committing a mortal sin. I started to beg God to deign to send down upon me all the torments of hell and all the sufferings He wished if only this priest would be set free and snatched from the occasion of committing a sin. Jesus heard my prayer and, that very instant, I felt a crown of thorns on my head. The thorns penetrated my head with great force right into my brain. This lasted for three hours; the servant of God was set free from this sin, and his soul was strengthened by a special grace of God. - St. Faustina
For an understanding of our unique feminine nature, let us look to the pure love and spiritual maternity of Mary. This spiritual maternity is the core of a woman’s soul. Wherever a woman functions authentically in this spirit of maternal pure love, Mary collaborates with her. This holds true whether the woman is married or single, professional or domestic or both, a Religious in the world or in the convent. Through this love, a woman is God’s special weapon in His fight against evil. Her intrinsic value is that she is able to do so because she has a special susceptibility for the works of God in souls — her own and others. She relates to others in His spirit of love. - St. Edith Stein
Everywhere the need exists for maternal sympathy and help, and thus we are able to recapitulate in the one word motherliness that which we have developed as the characteristic value of woman. Only, the motherliness must be that which does not remain within the narrow circle of blood relations or of personal friends; but in accordance with the model of the Mother of Mercy, it must have its root in universal divine love for all who are there, belabored and burdened. - St. Edith Stein
Never be afraid of loving the Blessed Virgin too much. You can never love her more than Jesus did. - St. Maximilian Kolbe
Love your children. In them you can see Baby Jesus. Pray for them a lot and every day put them under Holy Mary's protection. - St Gianna Molla
I wish I had a voice loud enough to tell all the sinners of the world to love Mary. She is the ocean across which one must travel in order to reach Jesus. - St. Pio of Pietrelcina
Each grace passes through her hands. - St. Pio of Pietrelcina
Don't become so engrossed in the activities of Martha that you forget the silence and surrender of Mary. May the Virgin who reconciles both duties so well, be your model and inspiration. - St. Pio of Pietrelcina
When we are truly sons of Mary, we understand this attitude of our Lord, and our heart expands and becomes tender. We feel the sufferings, doubts, loneliness and sorrow of all other people, our brothers and sisters. And we urgently want to help them and speak to them about God, so that they can treat him as their Father and understand the motherly care which Mary is offering them. - St. Josemaría Escrivá
Pray very much for the Pope, bishops, and priests. Since your Baptism you have always prayed faithfully for them. Continue to pray very much...very much. - Our Lady of Akita to Sr. Agnes Sasagawa
There are so many mothers today in the same situation as St. Monica. Nobody can thank them enough for what they have done through prayer and sacrifice for the Church and the Kingdom of God. May God reward them for it. If the desired renewal of the Church depends for the most part on its priests, then it will also depend to a large degree on the families and in particular women and mothers. - St. John Paul II
To accept Mary in our lives, entrusting ourselves totally to her: this is what our Lady expects of each of us. Entrustment is the only response adequate to the love of a person, in particular to the love of a mother. - St. John Paul II
In the history of the Church, even from earliest times, there were side-by-side with men a number of women, for whom the response of the Bride to the Bridegroom’s redemptive love acquired full expressive force. - St. John Paul II
It is the duty of every man to uphold the dignity of every woman - St. John Paul II
There can be no question of calling [Mary] a priest in the strict sense of the word since she has not received the priestly character and cannot offer Holy Mass nor give sacramental absolution. But... her divine maternity is a greater dignity than the priesthood of the ordained priest in the sense that it is more to give Our Savior his human nature than to make His body present in the Blessed Eucharist. Mary has given us the Priest of the sacrifice of the Cross, the Principal Priest of the sacrifice of the Mass and the Victim offered on the altar. - Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P
Time and again our Holy Father [Pope John Paul II] has appealed to the faithful women as they stand beneath Christ’s bleeding Mystical Body to carry on Mary’s role as Mother of the Church in our time. …I firmly believe that no small reason for the crisis in the Church today is due to the neglect of this spiritual motherhood by women in every state of life. - Fr. John Hardon, S.J.
Despite the excellence of our mothers, we persist nonetheless in looking for that ultimate maternal mirror in which we can discover ourselves to our deepest depths. Mary’s is the face we seek. - Fr. Peter Cameron, O.P.
How beautiful is the complementariness of men and women according to the Divine Plan. It is not by accident that St. Francis of Assisi was best understood by St. Clare; St. Francis of Sales by St. Jeanne Francoise de Chantal; St. Vincent de Paul by Louise de Marillac. - Alice von Hildebrand
This motherhood of Mary in the order of grace continues uninterruptedly from the consent which she loyally gave at the Annunciation and which she sustained without wavering beneath the cross, until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect. Taken up to heaven she did not lay aside this saving office but by her manifold intercession continues to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation. . . . Therefore the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the Church under the titles of Advocate, Helper, Benefactress, and Mediatrix. - Catechism of the Catholic Church
If in natural life a child is conceived, born, nurtured and cared for by its mother, then this applies even more to the spiritual life: behind all priests there is a spiritual mother who asked God for their vocation. She bears them through spiritual suffering and “nourishes” them by offering to God all her daily activities, so that they become holy priests, priests faithful to their special identity and special commitments. - Mauro Cardinal Piacenza