I must confess that as I gathered these photographs together I felt a bit overwhelmed. In the first place, for the gift of having been born and raised under the loving gaze of a mother. I am aware that not everyone has this experience, many do not. I thank God that I did. My mother’s gaze filled my life with security, meaning, and hope. Reflected there, I witnessed my value as a person. Those eyes became like training wheels for my interior life and my capacity of loving others.
In the second place, I was deeply moved by the moment that these images narrate. I saw in each one of their faces a joy and a fullness that I am unable to calculate. That first encounter between a mother and a child has something deeply mysterious to it, I would dare say, divine. It is as if the mothers had snuck into God’s heart for a few moments and returned back to Earth; or as if the Lord had cracked open the Heavens for them alone, in that very moment. For love is a window to God’s heart, it allows us to see Him face to face. Egoism is blinding, it is darkness. Yet to love, means to pour out our gaze upon another, to devote every atom of our being towards another, to tie our heart with theirs, our happiness with theirs, our smile with theirs, our tears with theirs. That is freedom. That is true personal realization. That is Trinitarian love.
It is God who gives life, but what does it feel like to directly participate in that gestation, in the gestation of the life of a son or daughter?
I know that what I could say will be infinitely insufficient. I will leave the question open and perhaps some mothers that read this post can share with us.
