Mama and Advent

We celebrated my mother’s 80^th birthday yesterday. 80?! That just seems amazing to me. She’s amazing. Especially when you consider that, at this age, she’s still caring for me, her dependent daughter. A mother’s love knows no end. I have recently taken steps to get more home health aides to assist in taking care of me, because my parents work hard and sacrifice much even as they get older. They are truly examples of self-giving Christian love.

Motherhood seems an appropriate topic for Advent. Not just because of my mother’s birthday, but also because of the upcoming feast of The Virgin Mary’s very beginning, The Immaculate Conception. It’s a beautiful thing in the whole to meditate upon the motherhood of Our Blessed Mother during the Advent season. We wait for the coming of Christ into the world as she waited for the coming of her child. Pregnant with anticipation, hope, and love, may we strive to bear witness to the fidelity of God and the glory of trusting in Him, and bear the good fruit of our lives for the sake of God’s kingdom, now and forever.

All for You, Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

In honor of the 80^th anniversary of my mother’s birth, allow me also to re-share this poem that I wrote for my mother several years ago:

Mama’s Hands

Within her hands, now rough and worn,

A little girl once held the morn,

Once swept the stars and shook the tree,

And played with possibility.

Then clutching fists could only pray

When hopeful dreamings slipped away,

And learn to beat and dig and tear,

To toughen skin and smother care.

And yet, within her hands I find

The strength to live and stretch my mind;

The world she formed with blood and pain

Has housed a little girl again—

Misshapen, yes, and less than planned,

But never lost within her hand.

© 2025 Christina Chase

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