Holy Communion for Mothering Sunday: celebrant the Rev Tola Badejo.

First reading: 2 Corinthians 1. 3-7
Gospel: John 19. 25-27

Mothering Sunday is an important day in the church's year for many different reasons. Its observance began in the Middle Ages as a day when people would visit their 'mother church', either the church in which they were baptised or their diocese's cathedral. Nowadays, it is seen as a reminder of how much we owe to our own mothers, and of the invaluable role women play in society. At the same time, it commemorates the women of the bible, including Mary, and underlines the physical reality of the Incarnation; Mary had to give birth to the child Jesus, nurse him and raise him just like any other infant.

Another reason for observing Mothering Sunday is the the opportunity it provides for reflection on the conventional imagery of our faith and on common social attitudes. While God is characterised as father, and Jesus was undoubtedly male, there is a fine tradition in the church of seeing God (in all three persons) in terms of maternal as well as fatherly qualities, reflected here in a passage from Dame Julian of Norwich's 'Revelations of Divine Love':

'The mother can give her child to suck of her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself, and does, most courteously and most tenderly, with the blessed sacrament, which is the precious food of true life … The mother can lay her child tenderly to her breast, but our tender Mother Jesus can lead us easily into his blessed breast through his sweet open side, and show us there a part of the godhead and of the joys of heaven, with inner certainty of endless bliss … This fair lovely word 'mother' is so sweet and so kind in itself that it cannot truly be said of anyone or to anyone except of him and to him who is the true Mother of life and of all things. To the property of motherhood belong nature, love, wisdom, and knowledge, and this is God.'