Welcome to today’s video. In this video, we’re going to talk about spiritual motherhood. What that is, and then I’m going to do a second video which will be some ways to kind of like practice it in real life.

Spiritual Motherhood

So to begin with, what is spiritual motherhood? This is a concept that again, I heard in the Catholic Church, that’s where I heard it. And it’s the idea of practicing a kind of maternity and care for others. whether or not they’re your biological children. And this is not to be confused with mothering like that annoying kind of thing that like some women will do. Spiritual motherhood is rather like exercising our maternal instincts on anyone who’s like suffering, the underdog, you know, in need of help somehow. It doesn’t have to be your physical child to be loving and kind to them. It’s the concept that all women are called to be loving and nurturing to anyone in need, not just their children.

And for those of us that are single and are hoping to get married and have children, I know a common concern or frustration is “oh, I don’t I’m not married, I don’t have kids. And I feel like I can’t express my nurturing side, I feel like I can’t be fully who I am because I don’t have children. I don’t have a man and I feel like something’s missing.” And this can kind of help with that. It’s not the same. I’ll give you that. But if you’re a little sad at how maybe your life feels kind of empty, and you’re hoping that once you have you get married, you have kids, maybe it’ll add to it. We’ll but in the meantime here’s some kind of a concept that may help with that. So, the concept basically, I’ve explained it, I’ve kind of summarized it, but to kind of distill it down to its essence, let’s talk about motherhood in general. And we can use biological motherhood. When we see a mother with her children, what is the thing that you notice the most? It’s like, well, she loves her children, right? And what does that mean when we say that she loves them? Well, she cares and she cares enough to go out of her way to kind of smoother path. A mother, a True Mother is someone who isn’t afraid of self-sacrifice for those she loves. She’s willing to put her comfort on hold to help someone else who needs it and you know, that’s a really good and beautiful thing.

And so that is kind of what we think of when we see a mother. And so it can often seem there are not as many opportunities for that when you’re not a biological mother. But there are plenty of opportunities for it. This is also why nuns are considered spiritual mothers like par excellence because, again, they’re looking after everyone. They’re devoting their life to whatever their apostolate or their ministry is, they’re devoting their life to that. So it’s either children they’re teaching, maybe it’s the sick and their nurses, things like that and that is a kind of motherhood because they’re taking care of those less fortunate than them. And so it still kind of fulfills the same concept, but it can be difficult if you’re not a nun, then it’s like, What do I do? But I’ve kind of gotten a little off-topic, but basically, that is what a mother is. She’s someone who cares. She’s willing to make sacrifices for low she cares because it’s very easy to kind of be all like hand wringing, and like, “Oh, I feel sorry for people”  but what distinguishes a mother or someone who is maternal is that this person doesn’t not only recognize the need because that’s kind of one of the hurdles nowadays, it’s hard enough for people to even recognize suffering, or that you’re suffering. And it’s another step for them to do something about it to be willing to notice it enough to put some kind of action in place. And so that’s why mothers are celebrated because they do both things. And also, this is another thing. I think nowadays, spiritual motherhood is needed. Because we have a lot of people nowadays that don’t feel like anyone cares about them. If you’ve come from a good family, it might be hard to wrap your head around this, but some people have never experienced love in their whole life. like they’ve never felt what it’s like for someone to care about them. The way I’m talking about a lot of people, their parents get up, go to work, they feed their kids, they send them off to school. And that’s kind of it. There’s not a lot of emotional intimacy there and emotional knowledge of their children and what they’re going through. Not everyone is like that. And oftentimes, it’s not the parents’ fault. We have such an economically unstable world nowadays that, you know, most parents, both parents have often had to work and then that creates a problem. The father can’t pay attention to his children and neither can the mother. And so then you grow up with people who are emotionally hurt, they’re a little wounded because they didn’t get that love and attention from their parents that they needed.

A lot of people talk about working mothers, they don’t, it’s not good because they can’t pay attention to their children but fathers are important too. You need the attention and the love and the care of a father as well.

God is Love

So anyway, one of another reasons for that is if you look at it theologically, if you look into it like the Dominicans talk about this, yeah the Dominicans, they will talk about and say that God is love. We know God is truth, God is justice, but God is also love. And that’s a theologically accurate thing to say. It’s not like poetic, happy talk. And so when there is less God, there is less love to go around. And God is love. That’s why our Lord gets mad. If you read the Bible, he often gets mad at the Pharisees and he calls them hard-hearted, and he gets he does not like hard-hearted people, and yet and will also see our Lord You know, they’ll say, you’ll read a passage and we’ll say, Our Lord, you know, had compassion on the multitude or whatever, but he was not happy with hard-hearted people. And that’s because you know, God is love. He’s tender-hearted. He’s not hard-hearted.

And so basically that’s, that’s what a spiritual mother is. She’s tender-hearted, she observes the suffering of others and tries to do it. She can’t help it. Now, you have to take care of yourself. And this does bring up something like the elephant in the room whenever we talk about this. And that is, well, what about me? What if I get walked on? What if people treat me like I’m a doormat, it’s all well and good to take care of those less fortunate. But, you know, a lot of times you can get burnt out. And that’s why let’s just say sympathy doesn’t mean stupidity. A lot of times, you know, you’ll hear the legend of like the saintly woman and she’s just talking to all these people and listening to how they’re doing and everything. And that’s because she’s trying, not always but sometimes a wise woman is listening, not just to be nurturing and loving, but she’s also trying to discern, is this person like, Is this true suffering or false suffering? You know, false suffering is where somebody kind of brought it on themselves. they should have known better but they didn’t. That could be some true suffering, but they knew better and they still did it. And now they’re experiencing the consequences of their behavior. And yet they want everybody to feel sorry for them that yeah, that’s false suffering or some people are putting on the impression of suffering just to kind of manipulate you. A lot of men are good at that sometimes you’ll date a guy and he’s just having nothing but problems in his life. And it’s because he’s trying to manipulate us trying to get something out of you. You have to be careful about that. And that’s why it’s important to talk to people find out what happened to them, find out why they’re in the situation they’re in and then you know, you have to kind of it’s difficult because you don’t want to judge people you never really know what someone’s going through or all the factors that led them to be in that situation. But you do need to talk to them and find out like, is this person going to benefit by my help in a good healthy way or are they kind of a lost cause and maybe I shouldn’t be helping them.

That’s why historically, women will often help children, helping a child is, I want to say almost always a good idea, depending on the circumstances, especially what their parents are doing. But children are often not in a position to take care of themselves, they’re too young, they’re too inexperienced, they don’t understand the world. So children are often, I don’t want to say a safe bet, because that sounds weird. But children are often a good example of someone who is truly in need of help, and it’s not their fault. So anyway, it’s just one of those things, you have to kind of discern it, you know, don’t be a bleeding heart and just blindly help anyone try to think it through and just kind of see. So that’s a little bit about spiritual motherhood. I hope that’s helpful. So yeah, and then in video two, we’ll talk about some concrete ways to kind of put this into effect.