Abundant breasts! They really are in today’s first reading (Isaiah 66:10-14). Jerusalem is pictured as a nursing mother, and those who love her are advised to suck fully of the milk of her comfort… [and] nurse with delight. … As nurslings, you shall be carried in her arms … as a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you. In Scripture we seldom have God’s care for us expressed in such strong feminine imagery. Because of differences in literary style and cultural references, the book of the prophet Isaiah was probably written by three different authors over a span of time. In today’s passage, the “third Isaiah” reassures the people that Jerusalem, ravaged by the Babylonians, would be restored to a place of true worship of the True God.
Jerusalem was the site of Pentecost, last week’s feast. It was from there that the apostles and disciples spread out to tell the good news of Jesus Christ. But in their own time Jerusalem would again be destroyed, this time by the Romans in 70 AD. So for early Christians, the nurturing mother became not a city, with its great temple, but rather the Church itself, “Mother Church.” St. Paul (Galatians 4:19) writes of being in labor to bring forth children in Christ. Christian writers of the first centuries after Christ saw the Church as a nurturing mother who educates her children and assures them of their safety within her embrace.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus sends his disciples out to preach. They have great success and come back bragging that “even the demons are subject to us.” But Jesus tells them not to rejoice because power has been given to them but because “your names are written in heaven.” In other words, it is not their personal spiritual power but the saving power of God that is at work in them. There have been many times in history when Mother Church abused the spiritual power given her, including in our time in clergy sex abuse. Yet the image of Church as a nurturing mother remains a powerful image of our Church at her best.
— Blog entry by Sister Mary Garascia
The post July 6, 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Mother Church: a Sunday Scriptures blog first appeared on Sisters of the Precious Blood.