Someone told me the other night I was celebrating SIN.
You may be wondering why they said something like this to me, so let me provide some context for you. Gabriel and I were eager to host a baby shower for a young pregnant mother named Amelia who recently arrived in our community. We made simple baby shower invitations and before Gabriel and I delivered them we said a quick prayer over them that Jesus would allow Amelia and her body to wait to give birth until the baby shower since her due date was so close. In the process of handing the invitations out throughout our community an older lady asked me, “in your country do you people always celebrate sin”? I was caught off guard, so I asked her, “what do you mean celebrate sin?” She said “well, you always host baby showers for women who are not married, who have children from different fathers, so to me you enjoy celebrating sin.”
My heart stopped upon hearing her statement to me. I was trying to figure out if she was attacking me, or Amelia, or perhaps both of us with her words. I asked her “would you rather me throw stones at her or tell her that she is not worthy to be a mother or that her child is not worthy of being born”? I did not even wait for a reply, I just said “that is not what Jesus would do!”
Jesus would not throw stones at a single pregnant mother who was brave enough to not have an abortion. Jesus would shower her with mercy, forgiveness, support, comfort and he would accept her and help her avoid sin in the future. And the Catholic Church teaches that we are called to mirror the same kind of love to single mothers or “Other people in “irregular situations,” or non-traditional families, like single mothers, need to be offered “understanding, comfort and acceptance” When it comes to these people, indeed everyone, the church need to stop applying moral laws, as if they were, in the pope’s vivid phrase, “stones to throw at a person’s life”. (Apostolic Exhortation, The Joy of Love - Amoris Laetita, Pope Francis)
We as humans are so eager to judge others and to calculate if someone is worthy or not. So many pregnant mothers hide in the shadows and hear the comments from the unapproving and replay in their heads, all that THEY DID WRONG to be in this situation alone. The truth is many are scared to lend a hand, and to celebrate the beautiful miracle that pregnancy is. Instead, they see it as a celebration of sin.
The fact is that single mothers are not to be considered not worthy of our love and help. They should be embraced and helped by all of us, because that is what Jesus would do. After all, how many times can we recall from the bible when Jesus drew near to sinners, and the encounter changed their lives! My thought is what if showering a single mother with love and support and acknowledge the hardship she is in, could be the very encounter that makes her see Jesus for the 1st time in her entire life?
Together let us learn to love like Jesus!
Karen and Gabriel (Celebrating a single mother and new life!)
Mission Post:
Casa de Santa María Magdalena:
Caserio Santa Clara Peru
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