Happy Mother’s Day!

…while both parents are responsible in all things for the family, it is the mother who is generally the first evangelizer. It was Mary who declared: "Do whatever he tells you" (Ibid. 2: 5). Experience shows that it is often Christian mothers who are the first to teach the truth about God, the first to join their children’s hands in prayer and to pray with them. Mothers teach their children to distinguish good from evil. They teach them the commandments of God, both the commandments given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, and the commandments of love of God and love of neighbour which Jesus put at the heart of the Christian moral life. The magnificent vocation and responsibility of parents, and in the first place of mothers, consists not only in bringing children into the world, but also in leading them to spiritual maturity.

-Blessed John Paul II, 1995 Homily at Uhuru Park

Thank you mothers, for being the first evangelizers and for leading your sons and daughters to spiritual maturity.