Christ's Love for His Mother

It is hard to believe that spring is already here and that winter is finally past. With the beginning of spring comes warm weather, beautiful flowers, and a very special day that we celebrate in May called “Mother’s Day”.

We would all agree that mothers are special and should be treated that way. Jesus himself put for the greatest example of how to treat a mother by the way in which He treated his on. It is interesting that in Luke 18 when the rich young ruler came to ask Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Christ mentioned five things and one of those was to honor your father and mother. This shows us how great an importance is placed on honoring your parents.

Christ exemplified this even while He was dying on the cross. With some of the last words He spoke, He made sure that His mother would be taken care of by giving her to the disciple John. This shows that even with the weight of the world on Him, He still cared for both the immediate and long-term care of His mother. If Christ can do that in the midst of being crucified, for sure we can do that on a daily basis.

This also shows the love and personalized value placed on Jesus’ relationship with His mother. He loved her not just as her creator, but as her son. He valued this relationship and did not take it for granted like we often do. Because Jesus was the Son of God, we often forget the influence she had on Him. She loved, nurtured and taught Him as He grew in grace knowledge. She had an impact and Christ did not forget this.

How much of an impact can a mother have on a child? I’ll let the last will and testament of Henry J. Heinz speak to this truth. Heinz was the wealthy distributor of the famous “57 Varieties” line. When he died and his will was read, the first few lines said this, “Looking forward to the time when my earthly career will end, I desire to set forth at the very beginning of this will, as the most important item in it, a confession of my faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior. I also desire to bear witness to the fact that throughout my life, in which there were unusual joys and sorrows, I have been wonderfully sustained by my faith in God through Jesus Christ. This legacy was left me by my consecrated mother, a women of strong faith, and to it I attribute any success I have attained.”