1st Reading: Acts 13:14, 43-52
2nd Reading: Revelation 7:9,14-17
Gospel: John 10:27-30
Today, Mother’s Day, we celebrate mothers and how mothers and women have mothered nonviolence. Today’s gospel is a short reading, but it is the culmination of a long discourse in the gospel of John in which Jesus refers to himself as the Good Shepherd. Jesus describes a strong, intimate relationship between the sheep and the shepherd so that the sheep know the shepherd’s voice and with trust respond to the shepherd. The Shepherd serves as a beautiful image of kindness and compassion but also courage and strength to protect the flock.
The shepherd-sheep relationship mirrors that of newborn human infants and their mothers. Indeed, in most cases, the bond between mother and child begins in utero. Immediately at birth, newborns recognize their mother’s voice; the new mother releases pheromones that the newborn also recognizes as mother. A mother wants so much for her child—a life of happiness, success, and a kind, gentle world where everyone is considered scared and respected; a world where humans are good stewards of creation and a world of nonviolence, a world of peace. Like the Shepherd, a mother has kindness and compassion along with courage and strength to protect her child. Mothers want to create a safe world for their children, and many have done this by mothering nonviolence to justice.
Often when we think of nonviolence movements, Gandhi or Martin Luther King come to mind. However, centuries before Gandhi or King, women have mothered nonviolence by responding in life-affirming, creative ways to an unjust world. Throughout the world, women have struggled collectively and nonviolently to bring about peace and justice.
In 1600, women of the Iroquois nation threatened to boycott affection and childbearing until the men gave them some power in decisions about war and peace. Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer used nonviolence to fight for religious freedom in the Massachusetts Bay Colony; look at the nonviolence of Lucretia Mott, the Grimke Sisters, and Harriet Tubman to end slavery; there are the suffragists Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, and Alice Paul; the anti-lynching campaigns of Ida B. Wells; the textile workers; the mothers of Love Canal; Dorothy Day and so many, many more women who collectively came together to nonviolently work for justice. They were often beaten, imprisoned, shunned by society, but each day they returned to their work to make a better world. Throughout the world, South Africa, China, Turkey, Egypt, women have mothered nonviolence for social justice.
One of the most poignant, courageous examples of a mother’s love and the mothering of nonviolence is the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 1976, the military overthrew the Argentine government and established a junta, and so began the junta’s Dirty War. Young people, an estimated 30,000, disappeared if they joined a union, sang freedom songs, raised their voices, were seen with the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time, or had done nothing at all. They were snatched from their homes in front of their bewildered, powerless parents; some left for a university class to never return; some young couples left for Sunday Mass, but never made it to the church—they disappeared. Mothers went to the Ministry of the Interior seeking information from the officials. After waiting for hours to meet with an official, mothers were told that their cases would be processed but, in all likelihood, their missing children had run off, had abandoned the family, or their children were terrorists who had been executed by other terrorists. After being dismissed and told by one official after another that the missing children were of no concern, the mothers realized they were wasting their time at the Ministry and decided they had to take their cases to the Plaza de Mayo in front of the Presidential Palace.
At a time when public demonstrations were forbidden, the mothers decided to stand together as witnesses to the disappearance of their children. First, there were only fourteen women who met every Thursday at 3:30, but then more and more mothers, sisters, daughters, and grandmothers joined walking in a slow-moving circle around the Plaza carrying photos of their loved ones. The newspapers were afraid to write about the mothers’ actions; American and British journalists who attempted to interview the mothers were arrested. People walking by the Plaza were afraid to acknowledge the women’s presence and looked away.
As the mothers drew international attention to the human rights abuses in Argentina, they became targets for police violence, repression, arrests, and murder. For about a year, the women endured the police violence until three of their leaders, two French nuns, and seven young helpers were murdered. The mothers withdrew from the Plaza. The junta thought the military police with the tear gas, guns, billy clubs, and murder of leaders had defeated the mothers. They were wrong. For months the mothers met secretly to organize, and despite the previous terror, the mothers returned to the Plaza every Thursday at 3:30 in greater numbers. They wore simple white head scarves stitched with the names of their children and the date they were disappeared; and now the photos of their disappeared children were poster size. Their number was so great that several blocks away you could hear a hum that sounded like buzzing in the electrical wires; it was the voices of the mothers as they marched and spoke their children’s names.
These women were the only group out of desperation, fear, and love who stood up to the brutal dictatorship to demand information about their missing children. The Catholic Church was silent; no Oscar Romero-like person emerged giving voice to the terror or suffering. Unfortunately, some priests betrayed the mothers and gave information to the police leading to their arrests. Yet, the mothers endured and continued to march. The mothers became a powerful, social movement and one of the only visible forms of protest during the seven years of terror and fear, the junta’s Dirty War. The mothers’ courage became contagious. Onlookers now stopped to applaud the mothers; newspapers gave them coverage; and the world began to watch. All agree that these mothers helped topple the ugly regime and helped bring the day in December 1983 when the people of Argentina inaugurated a president as head of a democratic government.
After democracy came to Argentina, the mothers still marched every Thursday to challenge the attempt to grant amnesty to the perpetrators. They successfully demanded investigative truth commissions and trials of the military junta.
The courageous Mothers of the Plaza were willing to face terror, violence, and death for their children. Wearing white scarves, every Thursday for seven years they marched. They marched.
Paula, your mother, Grace, would march for you; Ron and Kathy, your mother Marie would wear a white scarf and march for you; Nikolai, Ida would be at the plaza every Thursday for you; Marilu, Lucille would march for you; Dan, Anne Marie would march; as would Martha for you, Sara. Barbara, Phyllis would march as would Anna for you, Shane; Frank, your mother, Josephine would March for you; Mafalda, Elizabeth would march; Charles, Helen would be at the Plaza for you; Molly, Joan would march as would Joyce for Mike; Megan, Diane would there; Charlie, Janet would march for you; Anne, Maria and Gail would be at the Plaza for you; Steve, Phyllis would march; Ann, Carolyn would march for you; Marian, Hildegard would don a white scarf and march for you. Would not all our mothers march?
Today on Mother’s Day, let us carry the mothers of the Plaza and all our mothers in our hearts in thanksgiving for the love and protection given to us and for the mothering of nonviolence in the world. We need to change the universal rhythm so that it is by nonviolence we bring about justice in our lives, in our country, and among nations. Like the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, we need to mother nonviolence. We want a world where nonviolence has a home.