A MOTHER`S LOVE

From the Book: " Family Life " by Elder Paisios the Athonite, published by the Sacred Hesychastirion of St. John the Evangelist, Souroti-Greece, 2002, translated by Fr. Luke Hartung.

Geronda, you once told us that with love, a person grows and matures.
It's not enough for someone to simply love another; he must love him more than he loves himself. A mother loves her children more than herself. She fasts so as to feed her children, yet she experiences more gratitude than they. The little children are fed bodily and the mother spiritually. They experience the pleasure of taste, while she spiritual rejoicing.

A young girl before marrying is able to sleep till ten in the morning and even asks her mother to get her milk. She is lazy about doing even the slightest chore. She wants everything ready-made; everyone to take care of her. Her mother calls for her, her father calls for her, but she only wants to whittle the day away. Although love exists within her nature, it does not develop because she continually accepts help and favors from her mother, her father and her siblings. However, from the moment she becomes a mother, she resembles a little engine which works as much as it is forced to, because love constantly works within her. Before, she would have hated touching any¬thing dirt)' and immediately would have found aromatic soap to wash with. But after, when the child becomes dirty and she needs to wash him, she takes him and says ... my sweetheart!

She is not repulsed by it anymore. In the beginning, if you wake her, she yells, because she doesn't want to be disturbed. But after, when the child cries, she stays up all night without difficulty. She cares for the baby and rejoices. Why? Because she is no longer a child. She has become a mother and with it has come sacrifice and love.
Indeed, a mother comes to attain a greater love and sacrifice than the father, because the father is not given many chances to sacrifice himself. She distresses and gives more of herself for the children, but at the same time receives more from the children. Perpetually she gives, and thus she always takes. The father however, does not suffer much with the children, and therefore neither does he receive; his love is not as great as the mother's.

How many mothers come crying to me begging, "Pray for my child Father." What agony! Very few men say, "Pray for my child who has gone astray." Why, even today a mother, with what eagerness the poor thing forced her children—all eight of them—and put them all in line to take a blessing. For a father to do that would have been difficult. Russia survived because of mothers. A father's embrace, when without the Grace of God, is dry. While the mother's embrace, even when it is without God, has milk. The child loves its father and respects him, but due to the tender-hearted love and affection of a mother, the love for his fathers grows even stronger!