‘Mother and Child’ by Anna Raynoch-Brzozowska … a sculpture in Auschwitz (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
We are more than half way through Lent, and today is the Fourth Sunday in Lent (Lent IV, 15 March 2026) and Mothering Sunday or Mothers’ Day, and is also known in some places as Laetare Sunday.
Later this morning, I hope to sing with the choir at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, reading today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
‘Woman, here is your son … Here is your mother’ (John 19: 26, 27) … the Rood Screen in Holy Rood Church, Watford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
John 19: 25-27 (NRSVA):
25 Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ 27 Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.
‘Woman, here is your son … Here is your mother’ (John 19: 26, 27) … a Pieta image in the Chapel in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Reflections:
The Fourth Sunday in Lent is also known as Laetare Sunday because of a traditional Introit or prayer sung on this Sunday,
Laetare Jerusalem, ‘O be joyful, Jerusalem’ (Isaiah 66: 10).
Mothering Sunday is a Sunday when we probably hear little about the main option for the Gospel reading (John 9: 1-41), the story of the man who is born blind but who is healed, at the expense of a lot of repeat sermons on the benefits of motherhood or the stellar qualities of ‘Mother Church’, of cathedrals as the ‘mother churches’ of dioceses, or, in these days of global conflict and uncertainty, the supposed virtues of the ‘motherland’.
But I wonder and worry at times how many women feel isolated and marginalised by some of those sermons on Mothering Sunday – women who have had miscarriages or seen their children suffer and die; women who would love to but have never given birth to children; people who have grown up in families where the mother figure was absent or ill, died early, or was abusive or violent, women who put under family or social pressures to be mothers?
Many grieving and suffering mothers hearing this Gospel reading on Mothering Sunday may wonder why their children are suffering and how or where their sufferings and the sufferings of their children fit into God’s plans for the fullness of creation.
The blindness of the young man in that reading could not possibly be due to his sins or the sins of his ancestors. But how many of us blame other people for their plight, and how many of us still believe that those in poverty and deprivation simply need to ‘pull themselves up’?
The two Gospel readings offered as choices for Mothering Sunday are not easy reading either. Motherhood is difficult, and brings pain and grief for mothers and children. But motherhood also brings pain and grief to men and women who whose desire to be parents is never fulfilled. These two choices offer a view of motherhood that is challenging and asks us to question what it is to be a parent, to parent and to be parented.
The first option (John 9: 1-41), Christ meets a young man who has been blind since birth. The disciples ask Jesus: ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ (verse 2) He answers them: ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world’ (John 9: 3-5).
Many grieving and suffering mothers hearing this Gospel reading on Mothering Sunday may wonder why their children are suffering and how or where their sufferings and the sufferings of their children fit into God’s plans for the fullness of creation.
We must agree the blindness of this young man could not possibly be due to his sins or the sins of his ancestors. But how many of us blame other people for their plight, and how many of us still believe that those in poverty and deprivation simply need to ‘pull themselves up’?.
The second option is a much shorter Gospel reading (John 19: 25-27), where we hear the tender words, ‘Woman, here is your son,’ as the dying Christ on the Cross entrusts his weeping mother Mary to the care of the Beloved Disciple. But Christ is not creating a one-way relationship. He immediately follows this by creating a new relationship for the Beloved Disciple: ‘Here is your mother.’
He entrusts her to him – and him to her. Relationships always have at least two dimensions. But the best of relationships are three dimensional – one to another, and each other to God.
There are some relationships we cannot create, there are others we cannot control, and others still that we have no choice about.
We cannot create our family. Our families are already given, even before we are born or adopted.
And those relationships survive though all adversities. They are fixed. They are given. Even though my father and mother are dead, they remain my parents. Even though a couple may divorce, each one in the old relationship remains a sister-in-law or a daughter-in-law, a brother-in-law or a son-in-law – albeit qualified by the word ‘former.’ In time, they may find they have new relationships: when their children have children, they share grandchildren they never expected. They may want to forget their past relationship, but it remains on the family tree for some future genealogist to tell everyone about.
I like to imagine that one of the untold stories in the aftermath of the Wedding at Cana is the new network or web of family relationships that have been created. After the wedding feast, the first of the Seven Signs in Saint John’s Gospel, Christ ‘went down to Capernaum with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples; and they remained there for a few days’ (John 2: 12).
On the way, or back in Capernaum, one finds he is now a brother-in-law, another that she is a sister-in-law, some, perhaps, realise they have a new aunt or uncle, or perhaps a new niece or nephew by marriage.
We cannot create family, yet family often creates us, shapes us, gives us identity and allows others to decide where we fit socially.
There are relationships we cannot control.
Most of us cannot control who we work with. That is the choice of our employers, and even for employers there is legislation to make sure they are not discriminating. Clergy cannot, and should not try to, control who are their parishioners.
If we try to control who is and who is not a member of the Church, depending on the relationships we like to have and the relationships we do not like to have, we will find we have a Church that has an ever-decreasing number of members, so that eventually we become a dwindling sect, wanting to make God in our own image and likeness, rather than accepting that we are all made in God’s image and likeness. And that eventually becomes a sect of one, where there is no place for the One who matters.
There are relationships we have no choice about. I cannot choose my friends and I cannot choose my neighbours.
Have you ever noticed that when a house is on the market, both the vendors and the estate agents tell you the neighbours are wonderful? It is only after you move in that you are likely to find out if you have, as the recent ITV television documentary series describes them, ‘the neighbours from hell.’
I cannot choose my friends. No matter how much I want to be friends with someone, if they do not want to be my friend, that’s it. I cannot force friendship. When I have a friendship, I can work on it, nurture it, help it to grow and blossom. But I cannot force a friendship. If you don’t want to be my friend, that is your choice, and if you do, and I don’t nurture that friendship, then you are going to change your mind.
Christ knows all about relationships, and he shows that on the Cross.
Relationships define us as human. Without relating to others, how can I possibly know what it is to be human? From the very beginning, God, who creates us in God’s own image and likeness, knows that it is not good for us to be alone. And in the Trinity, we find that God is relationship.
Relationship is at the heart of the cross. And there, on the cross, even as he is hanging in agony, the dying Jesus is compassionately thinking of others and of relationships.
His mother Mary is the only person throughout the Gospel narratives who has been with Christ from the beginning to the end, from his birth to his death. She has been with Christ throughout his whole life.
Saint John, the Beloved Disciple, is the disciple whom Jesus loved. We are blessed if we have a very best friend, a person to whom I am closer than any other. John is such a best friend for Jesus throughout the Gospel narrative. In the Fourth Gospel, we hear that John was ‘the beloved.’ John was the person to whom Christ was the closest. John was the best friend of Jesus.
In the midst of his dying, pain-filled moments before his death, Christ is heard thinking of the needs of the two people who love him most during his life: his mother and his best friend.
As the soldiers are gambling over his clothes and casting lots to divide them among themselves, Jesus sees three women – his mother Mary, Mary the wife of Cleopas, and Mary Magdalene, standing near the cross, and his mother is standing with the Beloved Disciple.
He turns to his mother and he says to her: ‘Woman, here is your son.’
He then turns to the Beloved Disciple and says: ‘Here is your mother.’
It is not a command, it is not a directive, it is not an instruction. It is a giving in love, just as his own death on the cross is self-giving. And, in giving, there is love and there is life.
Christ teaches us to love, even when he is dying, even when we are dying. That is what relationships are about, and that is what the Cross is all about.
The cross broadens the concept of family – the family of God. Jesus changes the basis of relationships. No longer are relationships to be formed on the basis of natural descent, on shared ethic identity, on agreeing that others are ‘like us.’
Our shared place beneath the cross is the only foundational space for relationships from now on.
Mary gained another son. And the Beloved Disciple gained a new mother.
Beneath the cross of Christ, Christian fellowship is born not just for Mary and John, but also for you and me, and for everyone else who believes, for all who believe.
Beneath the cross of Christ, we become a new family.
Beneath the cross of Christ, we become brothers and sisters in Christ.
Beneath the cross of Christ, we realise that we are now part of the family of God.
On the cross, Christ entrusts us as his children to one another, to love one another.
‘Standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene (John 19: 5) … ‘Crucifixion with figures’ (1952-1958) by Graham Sutherland (1903-1980), chalk, ink and wash, in an exhibition in Lichfield Cathedral in 2018 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Prayers (15 March 2026, Lent IV):
The theme this week (15-21 March 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Lament and Hope’ (pp 38-39). This theme is introduced today with a programme update by Kennedy Jones, Church Engagement and Fundraising Officer, USPG:
‘At a recent workshop run by USPG, I was surprised and horrified to learn that the Church was deeply entangled in slavery, with scripture misused to justify oppression and racial hierarchies. These histories continue to shape how race is understood within Christian communities. During discussions, participants shared the ongoing struggles of living in contexts shaped by racial and religious histories. One reflected, “It is really challenging being an Irish Catholic in this country,” while another admitted, “We are tired. I feel like I’m just surviving … we are just tired.”
‘The Revd Dr Carlton Turner, Caribbean theologian and guest speaker, shared a powerful story of a woman discovering her family’s book listing enslaved people once owned by her ancestors. He spoke about the weight of inherited trauma and the Church’s struggle to lament, reminding us that “the Church doesn’t know how to lament … but Jesus does – he weeps, overturns tables, and is moved with compassion.”
‘As an African American woman, I have attended numerous conferences on racial justice, and I’ve grown up in classrooms where the history of slavery was often taught in ways that left Black students feeling deeply uncomfortable. These conversations are always heavy. Every Black person I know tries to stay engaged, but at the same time, we must protect our emotional wellbeing. There’s a constant tension between bearing witness and guarding ourselves from becoming numb.
‘Ultimately, I came away feeling this: we are desperately in need of Jesus. No amount of striving or strategising on our own will bring the healing we long for. He must be at the centre if we’re to make any real progress.’
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 15 March 2026, Lent IV) invites us to read and meditate on John 9: 1-41.
‘Woman, here is your son … Here is your mother’ (John 19: 26, 27) … the Crucifixion on the rood screen in Saint Ia’s Church in Saint Ives, Cornwall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Collect of the Day (Lent IV):
Merciful Lord,
absolve your people from their offences,
that through your bountiful goodness
we may all be delivered from the chains of those sins
which by our frailty we have committed;
grant this, heavenly Father,
for Jesus Christ’s sake, our blessed Lord and Saviour,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Collect of the Day (Mothering Sunday):
God of compassion,
whose Son Jesus Christ, the child of Mary,
shared the life of a home in Nazareth,
and on the cross drew the whole human family to himself:
strengthen us in our daily living
that in joy and in sorrow
we may know the power of your presence
to bind together and to heal;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer (Lent IV):
Lord God,
whose blessed Son our Saviour
gave his back to the smiters
and did not hide his face from shame:
give us grace to endure the sufferings of this present time
with sure confidence in the glory that shall be revealed;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Merciful Lord,
you know our struggle to serve you:
when sin spoils our lives
and overshadows our hearts,
come to our aid
and turn us back to you again;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Post-Communion Prayer (Mothering Sunday):
Loving God,
as a mother feeds her children at the breast
you feed us in this sacrament with the food and drink of eternal life:
help us who have tasted your goodness
to grow in grace within the household of faith;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
God of love,
passionate and strong,
tender and careful:
watch over us and hold us
all the days of our life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflections
Continued Tomorrow
‘Woman, here is your son’ … ‘Here is your mother’ (John 19: 26, 27) … a stained glass window in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
http://nrsvbibles.org
