Hey, everyone, God bless you. Thanks so much for tuning in.
In my opinion, one of the most important and counter cultural aspects of formation that we do in the Church is by lifting motherhood to its proper position. And the West has decided that motherhood can be mocked, motherhood can be destroyed, it can be thrown on the ground and stamped on and spit on, which is exactly what's happening and has been happening for some time in our culture.
If you're going to be an orthodox Christian, if you're going.
To actually become a person who is a disciple of Christ, you're going to have to have a radical change in your thoughts about motherhood. You're going to have to abandon the cultural hostility that we see everywhere, not just in the birth rates, of course, which are the most catastrophic witness to the abandonment cultural devaluation of motherhood and of humanity in general, since we don't care about having children anymore who are the image of God. Utter foolishness, Utter foolishness.
It's not just the birth rate, but also the percentage of those who are not getting married and are never becoming mothers is just absolutely sky rocketing. And if you're going to be a Christian, and you're going to be you're going to escape from this dark and falling world into the light of God. You have to change your mind about the glories of motherhood.
And you can do that by living in the Church.
Because the Church is herself a mother, the greatest of all mothers, and her nurturing love is well it's the foundation of our success in the Christian life. Saint Paul calls the Church our mother and says that the Church is the Jerusalem above who is our mother. We also in the Church teach people to understand and know and love the most pure Virgin Mary, the Theotokos. Her presence is so civilizing, her radical mother, not just of her son,
our Lord Jesus Christ, but of the whole Church. She relates to us as a mother and teaches us how to accept love and be loved and value motherhood. I want to read to you now a brief paragraph or so about a number of saintly mothers that I have found encouraging and who have what shall I say, rocked my world and helped me to be more human. This is what love is. This is how the Church produces beauty.
The opposite, of course, is the harlot of Babylon, who's also a mother, an awful mother, a mother of harlots and all the abominations of the earth. We reject that kind of fake, bogus satanic motherhood and all of its substrata that we see in our culture today, and we embrace true motherhood, motherhood of the Church, the motherhood of the Virgin Mary, and of all the saintly women who have put the love of God and the love of their families above everything else. Let me tell you about
a few glorious mothers. Saint Macrina the Mother, the grandmother rather of Saint Basil the Great. She was outstanding for her intellect and piety. She was a disciple of Saint Gregory the wonder Worker, teaching her family how to have a spiritual father. In the reign of Diocletian, she abandoned her home and hid in the forest and desert places with her husband Basil. Although their home was confiscated, they
felt no pangs of regret. Can you imagine she modeled being attached to the things above and not being a materialist. Stripped of everything except their love for God, they settled in the ancient forest and spent seven years there, and by God's providence, goats would come from the mountains and provide them with food. Saint Emilia the mother of Saint Basil the Great, so that was Macreeena of the Grandmother. Of course, Basil also has a sister of Saint Macgreena
and named after the grandmother. Saint Emilia, the mother of Saint Basil the Great, bore ten children and endowed each of them with a Christian spirit, so that at least six of them became Saints Basil the Great, Gregory of Nissa, Peter of sebast Novcratius, Macrina Theo Savilla. She founded a monastery in her old age, where she lived with her daughter Macrina, and where she entered into the Rest and the Lord on the eighth of May in three seventy five.
Saint Martha followed the practice of rising at midnight to pray, visited the poor and the sick constantly. This is one universal of Godly mothers is that they have hearts of compassion, and they teach us, especially their sons. They teach their sons how to have sympathy, how to combine a quest for strength, but with tenderness, like our savior has. She ended up living and being buried at the base of
her son's pillar. She spent her last decades listening to his daily preaching, because he would preach at three o'clock in the afternoon, at the ninth hour, I believe, and she would listen to him, and she lived and ended up being buried at his pillar.
Incredible women, Incredible mothers.
Glorious mothers provide powerful support for their children in the midst of a dark world of temptations. Think of the righteous Solomonia and her seven Maccabee's sons. Two courses, it says in the scriptures, were open to this mother, that of religion and that of preserving her seven sons for a time as the tyrant had promised. She loved religion more, religion that preserves them for eternal life. According to God's promise. The mother of the seven boys more than any other
mother loved her children. In seven pregnancies. She had implanted in herself tender love towards them, and because of the many pains she suffered with each of them, she had sympathy for them. That's what a pious mother does. She calls her son to act for God's sake. Glorious mothers lift their sons up, They pick them up, they orient them. This is how mothers can help sons who are weak
or are falling by their courage. And of course, I think some of you may know the story of the incredible mother and wife of Saint James, the person this is November twenty seventh, who he who was so high up in the Persian kingdom, the best friend of the Emperor, of the Pagan Emperor, who under great and extreme pressure, entered into the house of Pagan worship and knelt, and his mother and his wife disowned him, gave him a stentorian rebuke for participating in Persian worship, and by this
brought him to his repentance. And he offered every part of his body as he was chopped to pieces, as an offering of repentance to Christ for having compromised himself.
Where would we be without our mothers.
We lift our voices in thanksgiving to God for our pious mothers, lived our voices in praise to them with great gratitude, acknowledging how much we cherish them, how much we love them. And I say to all of you who are looking for a wife, look for a wife who will be a great mother. And all you young ladies who are anticipating being wed, embrace the incredible calling
of motherhood. Follow the Virgin in this most sublime, holy, meaningful calling to actually bear children the image of God and to raise them as beautiful, beautiful servants of the Holy Trinity. That may the Lord save us all by our mother's prayers.
Amen.
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