Today being Mothering Sunday, I have picked from Sing Praise a hymn titled “God of Eve and God of Mary” by the late Fred Kaan. The title line addresses God, rather than addressing Mary directly as a more Catholic tradition would do, but makes the parallel between Eve, the symbolic ancestor of all humanity, and Mary, regarded as “mother of the Church” for her role in bearing and raising Jesus. He is also addressed as “God of love and mother-earth”.
The first verse goes on to thank God for our own mothers who “shared their life and gave us birth” and the second asks him to be present in the “caring that prepares us for life’s way”.
The third verse gives thanks for the Church (in the sense of the Christian community), often referred to in the feminine and here described as “our mother”, and for the Spirit who in the last verse is also described as “caring like a mother”. The further verse does give a nod to those who, like my wife and me, have not been able to have children but are “parents under God” (I don’t know what is intended by that phrase, maybe it means our calling to nurture the spiritual life of others in the church).
There are several images or aspects of mothering here: the Church as mother of her members (the original meaning of Mothering Sunday); Mary as mother of the Church; the literal and natural sense of motherhood, which is what most people now think of on what has generally become known as Mothers’ Day; Eve as our symbolic female ancestor; the Spirit representing the nurturing love of God; and the earth which with its natural fecundity is viewed (in non-Christian spiritualities) as a mother figure in place of God him/herself.
This is all rather confusing, with Christian, new-age and secular ideas on one page, and I think Kaan may have tried to pack too many concepts into one hymn. Better, I think, to stick on this day to thinking of the Church as our mother as originally intended, remembering that the church consists of its members, and so it’s our responsibility (whether parents or not) to care for each other. Mothers’ and Fathers’ Days could sensibly be combined into a single Parents’ Day now that there are many non-traditional family arrangements (although I’m sure the greetings card industry wouldn’t like that), and since 2018 the Roman Catholic Church officially celebrates “the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church” on the Monday after Pentecost..