A Holy Mother's Day

A mother is defined by a woman who becomes pregnant. One who was barren has been given a divine gift. The womb has been planted with seed, and from this ground has risen new life. A separate person lives inside the woman.

The fruit of this vine has been delivered to the world. We call this labor. This sacrificial work is the crux of motherhood. In the ancient Jewish world (and even in most places until recently), giving birth held great risk and peril in the possible death of the mother. In giving new life, she risks the sacrifice of her own. That pain of labor, and even death, is the price extracted for the Fall of Eve.

The quintessential Biblical picture of this martyrdom of motherhood is Rachel. Rachel was the favorite of Jacob (Israel). Though she was barren, she ultimately became the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, the last two of the twelve sons of Jacob (Israel). While many of us remember the story of Joseph, who was sold for twenty pieces of silver by Judah but then became royalty and saved his people as well as the gentiles (Egyptians), we are less familiar with the story of Benjamin.

It is during Benjamin’s delivery that Rachel, his mother, dies. In her demise during labor she names her son, Benoni, which means “son of my sorrow.” Rachel’s body is not buried in the family burial plot, which would have been traditional for a Jewish family, but is rather buried in Ephratha, the ancient name for Bethlehem. Jacob (Israel) alters the name Benoni to Benjamin, meaning “son of the right hand” (Gen. 35:16-20).

This would be little more than a tragic story of an ancient heroic mother, if not for the prophecy of Jeremiah. While the people of Israel (the descendants of the twelve sons of Jacob) are in pain in Babylonian captivity awaiting to be delivered, to be “born again” into the land promised by God the Father, they “cry out” like a woman in childbirth.

Thus says the LORD, a voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and weeping.

Rachel is weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted by her children because they are not. (Jeremiah 31:15)

We learn in Jeremiah’s prophecy that the people of Israel not only remembered Rachael, the bride of Israel and the mother of the children of Israel, but they also viewed her as an ongoing type of matriarchal presence in Ephratha who laments and intercedes to God for her children who were in captivity. According to the Jewish rabbinic tradition,

Jacob foresaw that the exiles would pass on from thence, therefore he buried her so that she might pray mercy for them.  (Genesis Rabbah 82:10)

In his book Jesus and the Roots of Mary, Brant Pitre, Professor of Scripture at the Augustine Institute, notes that “through the centuries, Jews, Christians, and Muslims have come to the traditional site of Rachel’s tomb near the city of Bethlehem as a holy place of prayer. In the 20th century, we even have records of Jews visiting Rachel’s tomb to light candles and ask for her prayers.”

Rachel is the symbol of the suffering mother for all of Israel. Her connection is not only found in the prophet Jeremiah and the Psalms (132:6), but also in the New Testament in Matthew 2:16-21 when Herod slaughters the innocent firstborn males of Israel, and Rachel, though buried in Ephratha, is made present “weeping for her children.”

Rachel, the bride of Israel, the birth-giver to Joseph (who is a type of Jesus), is the birth-giver of “the son of sorrow” who becomes the “son of the right hand.” Though passed from this life, she weeps for all of her children. She makes intercession when her children are threatened with captivity or death. In the same way that King David was born in Ephratha and reopened the messianic lineage of Israel, so too Jesus, son of David, again reopens the messianic lineage of Israel. This is prophesied by Micah: “Ephratha…out of you shall come forth to me the One to be ruler of Israel…” (Micah 5:1). It is Rachel’s lamentation and weeping for her children that escort Mary and the Christ child away from Ephratha to escape into Egypt, the same land to which Joseph escaped from death. From the grave, Rachel’s ancient cry is a message to this faithfully Jewish Mary.

Rachel is the prefigurement of Mary, the bride, the birth-giver of Jesus who is “a man of sorrow” (“the suffering servant” of Is. 53:3). Mary is both the new Eve and the new Rachel. What was defiled in Eden and buried in Ephratha has been made pure in Bethlehem and risen to a heavenly Jerusalem at the right hand of God the Father with her Son.

But the labor pains of Mary, the Theotokos (bearer of God), were at Golgatha. Here is where she cries out and laments the pain of motherhood. Here is where she speaks the unspeakable, that her Son, promised by the angel Gabriel as the Son of God, would be a “man of sorrows” and “acquainted with grief.”

Christ’s own words speak directly to this maternal connection from Eve to Rachel to Mary (Jn. 16:21-22). The image of the Day of the LORD being a time of great suffering like a pregnant woman in labor runs from the Old Testament to the Cross to the Last Day described in John’s Revelation as a woman clothed in the sun. (Is. 13:6-9; Zeph. 1:14, 15, 18; Joel 2:30, 31; Matt. 24:4-8, 29; 1 Thess. 5:2, 3; Rev. 6:15).

And like Eve and Rachel, Mary becomes a type of mother for all of God’s people, the mother of the resurrected living, and the mother of the children of the New Israel. Mary who is the first Christian who accepts Jesus inside of her, is also the embodiment of the Church, the Theotokos, the one who bears God. The title Theotokos, the mother of God, is not a late invention by the Church. It is in the Bible where we read that Mary is “the mother of my Lord” (Lk. 1:43). In the same way that John the Baptizer recognizes Christ in Mary’s womb and becomes the prophetic voice that prepares the way for the Son of God, so too Elizabeth recognizes Mary’s role and becomes the prophetic voice that prepares the way for the mother of God.

The Church is the bride of God, the bearer of the Son of God, the mother of all of God’s children, the queen mother of the King of Heaven, the ark who has the WORD of God contained inside her incorruptible chamber, the third temple, the one who must bear the weight of the cross at Christ’s feet knowing her pain is a lament, a sword that pierces her soul (Lk. 2:34-35), who carries the promise of life to the world. And like Rachel, she makes intercession on behalf of her children, of which the Holy Apostle John becomes her first adopted child: “…behold Thy mother.”

For those of you who are uneasy with Mary, the Theotokos, being called the queen of heaven, or ark, or incorruptible, or one making intercession (“save us,” “rescue us”)—these are not “Roman Catholic” inventions—these are Biblical Jewish images. These poetic images of veneration and intercession by a “Holy mother” are deeply Hebraic and thoroughly Biblical in the Old and New Testaments long before Roman Catholicism was an entity. It is the modern Protestant Church that has lost her mother.

On this Mother’s Day, be not grateful only for your earthly mother who risked her life to give you birth, and wept for you when you were away from her, and continued to intercede for you throughout your life—but give thanks to “the mother of my Lord” (Lk. 1:43). She is the one woman that “all generations shall call blessed among women” (Lk. 1:28, 46-55).

During Christmas many Christians are willing to recall Mary’s song, The Magnificat. During this Feast of the Nativity, Orthodox Christians sing beyond the notes of “Little Town of Bethlehem”; we chant the ancient tones of “O House of Ephratha.” Mary is not just a lucky girl chosen by God whom we remember for a season, or a mother we think of just on one day—she is the mother we ask to pray with us and for us, as the Jews did with Rachel.

When we sing of Mary, we assume Rachel. The holy mothers of Ephratha are mothers who suffer for love. Mary holds Christ and cares for Him. She weeps for Christ. She cares for Christ’s offspring, the “little Christs” called Christians. She intercedes for God’s people as a holy mother in heaven at the right hand by her Son. And we on earth light candles and by intercessory prayer ask for prayers not only among those on earth but also those in heaven. Death does not separate us from the love of God. Neither does it separate us from the love of His mother.