My mother was a prayerful woman. When she made it back to the Church, she rolled up her sleeves and knew she had a serious duty to fulfill….getting her children to heaven. So she prayed…and prayed.
Many things happened to our family through those years….serious things. She kept praying. I will not know the exact outcome of those prayers until I reach my Eternal Home, but I believe that her prayers saved our family from falling over a precipice of indescribable peril. May God rest her soul.
Please say a prayer for her. Her name is Beulah Weeres. (She implored me not to forget to pray to her for help….you can pray to her, too! In Purgatory or Heaven she will intercede for you. She cared very much for those who carried heavy crosses. She was one of them.)
A side note: Someone sent me this beautiful, hand-drawn picture of my dear mother. I don’t know who you are but I assume you have read my posts about my mother and drew the picture from one of the photos shared here. I want to thank you very much. It is very special to me and I have it hung in a prominent place in our home. (And also thank you for the picture of Margy…it is hung by my mother’s picture).
The Mother in Her Prayer
by Rev. W. Cramer, D.D., The Christian Mother, 1880
A mother who is animated with a truly Christian spirit, and who consequently knows how to value her vocation, will always be much given to prayer. Her very vocation is a continual inducement to seek communion with God. It offers a never-failing nourishment to her spirit.
The truly Christian mother is remarkable for her fervor in this exercise. Could it be otherwise? Knowing full well the great responsibility attached to her duties as a mother, and glowing with desire for the happiness of her children, she cannot but feel a never-ceasing impulse to have recourse to God, since it is only by His assistance that she can fulfill these her duties and secure the accomplishment of her motherly desires.
How sublime is the vocation of a mother! How much is required to fulfill all its demands! And how great and numerous the difficulties she has to encounter in the faithful and salutary discharge of her duties. What sacrifices, hardships, and troubles has she not to take upon herself, not only for days, but, if she has many children, for many, many years!
Indeed such a task surpasses all human strength. “With man this is impossible” Therefore God must help. It is to Him that the truly good mother has recourse in whatever regards her vocation. She asks of God grace for herself and grace and help for her children. She entreats the Lord to assist her in the discharge of all the duties of her motherhood.
She implores His grace to lead a truly Christian life, which is the most essential condition that she may give a good education to her children. She prays for wisdom, that she may discover true God-pleasing ways by which to lead her children to salvation, and especially that she may understand how she should treat each one according to its particular good or bad qualities.
She entreats God to give her a true, supernatural, enlightened love for her children, similar to that of the godly Blanche, and to increase such love in her. She prays for courage and strength, for the spirit of self-abnegation and perseverance, that she may not give way to difficulties and troubles which are often very great, and to persevere to the end in all that regards the good education of her children.
It is thus that the mother prays for herself. At one time it is to obtain this grace, at another that. She prays thus in the morning and in the evening, at Holy Communion and during other devotions. Perhaps she undertakes from time to time some pious exercises to obtain God’s special assistance for the discharge of her duties, and performs for this end some particular good works; above all, works of Christian charity and mercy.
She prays with great confidence, since she knows that the Lord, in the holy sacrament of matrimony, and in making her a mother, has given her a right to all those graces which she needs in her vocation, and that He is always ready to grant her as many as are necessary for her true welfare, if she only asks for them in fervent prayer.
And what is the fruit of such prayers? The grace of God shows itself in constantly increasing favors for such a mother. She becomes ever more fit for her vocation, and fulfils her duties in a manner which is a blessing to her children, and for herself a fountain of continual merit.
Why is the importance of prayer so little understood by many mothers? They do not pray, and consequently they are not – by their own fault -capable of fulfilling their duties as mothers. Hence so many omissions, so many acts of negligence, so many mistakes and errors in education by which numbers of children are lost.
The mother implores God’s grace and assistance also for her children. In the first place, she asks of God to bless whatever she does for her children. She knows full well that whatever she may do for them will not have the desired effect without God’s blessing. She is therefore very anxious to accompany whatever she does for her children with a beseeching look to heaven.
It is with God that she begins all her work, and to Him she recommends them after having done what was in her power, in order that He may preserve and bless them and make them effective for her children.
The mother prays for her children. God is rich in all good things, and He willingly grants the petition of those who have recourse to Him. Sacred history furnishes abundant examples of mothers who, in consequence of their persevering prayers, have obtained of God the most precious gifts and graces for their children.
Have we not also to look here for the reasons why the consolation of seeing their children truly pious and happy is withheld from so many parents? Why so many children are given up to bodily and spiritual miseries, and alas! perish miserably? The parents, the mothers, do not pray at all for their children, or not as they should; hence all those gifts and graces, which, according to God’s holy will, they should receive by the prayers of their parents are withheld from them.
The Christian mother prays for her children. Prayer for her children easily occupies the principal place. She prays that God may preserve them from sin, above all from mortal sin; that He may free them of their faults, that He may give growth and increase to the precious germs of faith, hope, and charity and to all the other virtues contained in them; that He may lead them to salvation.
The truly good mother accompanies her child with prayer to school, to catechism, to confession and to Holy Communion, so that everywhere those endeavors of the child, which of themselves are still insufficient, may by God’s blessing become truly beneficial to it.
Let us at this point advance a little beyond the years of childhood. When the child is a prey to bodily infirmities and sufferings, or when the danger of death approaches it, then even less piously-disposed mothers have recourse to prayer; but how much more is this to be expected of a truly Christian mother?
But above all does she pray with still greater earnestness and fervor when the souls of her children are exposed to dangers, when there is danger of them falling into mortal sin and of being lost forever. And how great will not her fervor be should she no longer have a personal influence over the child!
How anxiously does not her afflicted, oppressed heart then cry to heaven! It was thus that Saint Monica prayed and supplicated for her erring son Augustine during many years and with an abundance of tears; and how glorious was her success!
The world of today is, alas! too apt to bring Christian mothers to a similar sad condition. How many sons and daughters are there who, seduced by worldly allurements, have thrown themselves into the arms of frivolity and vice! Ah, if they had mothers like Monica, then there would still be ground for hope.
But as the world now moves, they will perish miserably, because their mothers do not know how to pray. To what great dangers are not children exposed, especially when they have to leave home and live with strangers, far from their family, – dangers also which generally grow with increasing age!
Behold here another inducement for a Christian mother to multiply her prayers. From that time she will never cease to entreat the Lord to take the son or the daughter under His mighty protection more than ever, that He may restore them to her with their faith and innocence unimpaired.
And the more important the affairs of the children become, the more is Heaven’s blessing and protection needed for them, and the greater also will be the mother’s fervor and zeal in their behalf.
Thus it happens that the truly Christian mother never grows unaccustomed to the exercise of prayer. Wherever she appears before God in prayer, in the morning or in the evening, in church or at home, at Mass, at Holy Communion, on Sundays or on feast-days, when making the holy Way of the Cross, on pilgrimages – in short, everywhere her children are present to her mind, they are everywhere the chief object of her prayers and entreaties.
And she offers up all her good works, her difficulties, her sufferings, for her children. Her mother’s heart gives her no rest until she has performed, especially at stated times, some special good work for their benefit.
It is above all towards Jesus our Lord to whom the devotion of a truly Christian mother for her children is directed, since He is the friend of children. She hides her own children in His loving Heart.
She is also active in recommending her children to the prayers of those whom she knows to be consecrated to God, and in whose prayers she thinks she is justified in placing great confidence. Especially does she recommend them to the saints in heaven, first of all to the blessed Mother of God, then to their guardian angels and to those saints whose names they bear, and to all the holy and innocent children in heaven.
This is the Christian mother in her prayer! And who can calculate the number of the blessings which the prayers and entreaties of such a pious mother bring down upon the child? The salutary influence of the endeavors of a good mother for her children can scarcely be valued enough; yet her earnest prayers may perhaps do still more for their salvation. This at least cannot be doubted, that without prayer all the efforts of a mother for her children are often entirely useless.
What a powerful motive to pray and to make constant progress in virtue and piety! For the better a mother is the more acceptable are her prayers to God, and the greater and the richer will be the blessings which they will draw down from heaven on her children. In regard to this also the saying is true that “One of the greatest blessings is to have a truly good mother.”
Happy, therefore, is the child who is blessed with such a mother! Oh, that we could proclaim throughout the whole world and fix deep in the heart of every mother the words, “Pray; pray without ceasing; pray with all earnestness and fervor for your children!”
“Saying prayers when you least want to, simply because you love God and have a kind of dry respect and a sense of obedience, is to gain the greatest merit for them.” -Mary Reed Newland
“It is worth while now for me, – now while the brief occasion lasts – to overcome one temptation, to do one small kindness, to improve my mind by one half hour of study, to wait in patience when there is nothing else to be done, to bear a headache, or sleeplessness, or some small pain….”
Springtime Apron! Feminine and Beautiful! Fully lined, quality material, made with care and detail. Available here.
Very beautiful reading! Have a blest day! 😇