There is a fine old proverb that goes: "God could not be everywhere, so He created mothers." One of the truly wonderful realities in this world is the love of a mother for her children. That love is one of the best proofs of the magnitude of God’s infinite love for each one of us, for a mother’s love is one of God’s special creations, also.

The love of a mother is never exhausted, it never changes, it never tires. A father may turn his back on his child, brother and sister may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands, but a mother’s love endures through all. In good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world’s condemnation, but a mother still loves on, and still hopes that her child will turn from his or her evil ways and repent. Still she remembers the infant smiles that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of his or her childhood, the opening promise of youth. She can never be brought to think her child all unworthy. Because of a mother’s greatness, in the words of Sacred Scripture: "Her children rise up and call her blessed."

I wonder oftentimes how many women today realize what they owe to the Catholic Church. The Church, in ages past, lifted woman from the depths of slavery and degradation to which a pagan world consigned her and made her queen of a Christian home. Today, selfishness, career seeking, materialism, a false feminism and various false philosophies are disrupting the home and threatening woman’s position there.

I once read in some article of G. K. Chesterton the finest tribute to mothers that was ever written. He said, "I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean, when they downgrade a mother’s work in the home. When work in the home, for instance is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery means dreadfully hard work, I admit that a woman drudges in the home, as men once drudged in building the beautiful Cathedral of Amiens, or as men once drudged behind their guns in the battle of Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is the more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then, as I say, I give it up. I do not know what the word means. To be like a queen within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be like a grand merchant of a wonderful department store, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes, and books; to be like wise old Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene, I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it can narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the multiplication tables, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? No, a woman’s work in the home is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is small. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task. I will never pity her for its smallness."

Let women be true to their task of homemakers, and they will always be honored and revered by the sweet name of ‘MOTHER’.

This day would not be complete without a tribute to the Queen of Mothers, our Blessed Lady. She is God’s First Lady and Mother and Queen of Heaven, and she is the First Lady of the world, too. We can never love her or revere her as we ought. She is the Mother of mothers, Mother of Christ, Mother of Divine Grace, Mother most pure, Mother most chaste, Mother most amiable, Mother most admirable, Mother of Good Counsel. She is the Star of the Sea who will see us safely into port if we but call upon her. She loves us more than all the mothers in the world together. She once prophesied that "All generations shall call me blessed." Let us, her children, "rise up and call her blessed."