Mary teaches us how to mother in one simple way: receptivity
If motherhood is not about perfection, perhaps it’s about acknowledging our imperfections with a loving heart, multiple apologies, and a docility to learning. Maybe it’s allowing Our Lord to work on us and through us.

When in doubt, be devout, or so they tell my altar-serving sons. When in doubt, my version of being devout is to check Sacred Scripture and the deposit of our faith. Let’s test this theory of what we should pursue in motherhood. We have our own pinch-hitter, the secret Wild Card, the woman who raised Our Lord himself to show us the way.

And Mary teaches us how to mother in one simple way: receptivity. “But Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5). And of course we know that it is her soul, the very essence of her being that “magnifies the Lord and rejoices in God” (Luke 1:46).

We hear so little from the Blessed Mother in Sacred Scripture. How I long to know the fullness of Mary’s hidden days in Nazareth, the rhythm of her mornings, the quiet of her evenings. How I’d love an account of the Passion through her eyes to meditate with! We receive a mere 188 words. And yet Mary teaches us how to mother in one simple way: receptivity. We don’t need more than 188 words from her; her example is enough.