As I read biographies of the saints, a common theme emerges: the influential role that their mothers played in their lives. Some of these stories and anecdotes of the saints’ mothers are too sweet and inspiring not to collect and share them.
One thing that stands out to me so clearly is that we need not reinvent the wheel. Jesus Christ has paved the path and the Christians before us have followed in His footsteps; now we, too, must tread the same path. Generations of women before us have been raising holy children, whether they were poor farmers or rich nobility. All the graces to fulfill our duties are available to us in the graces of the Sacrament of Matrimony. Let us use and cooperate with these graces which God will so generously pour out to us in this vocation, if only we will ask.
The mother of St. Alphonsus Ligouri: Anne Catherine Cavalieri
His mother was a woman of singular virtue, descended from parents remarkable for their piety and rank. Devoted to prayer, loving the poor, she practiced self-denial and mortification, abstained from worldly amusements, and was to be found most frequently in the house of God.
Anne gave birth to Alphonsus on September 27, 1696. Two days later, he was baptized and received the following names: "Alphonsus Mary Anthony John Francis Cosmas Damian Michel-Angelo;" the first of which were given him in memory of his ancestors, the others in honor of the Saints on whose respective days he was born and baptized. From the hour of his birth, his mother placed him, in a special manner, under the protection of the Blessed Virgin.
Contrary to the usual custom among the nobles, the early education of Alphonsus was not confided to strangers; his mother superintended it herself, and instructed her son in the knowledge of religion. The brother of Alphonsus, D. Gaetan, related that every morning after having blessed her children, she made them pray to God, and every evening she assembled them around her, and taught them the elements of the Christian faith, reciting with them the Rosary and other prayers in honor of different Saints. She was careful in preventing them from associating with other children of their age; she wished that grace should anticipate in them the malice of sin, and that they might early be taught to hate it; she therefore took them every week to confess to her own director, F. Thomas Pagano, of the Oratory of St. Jerome. It was thus she guided her dear Alphonsus, and made him truly holy. Above all, she endeavored to kindle in his heart a tender love for Jesus Christ, and a filial confidence in Mary.
To the latest period of his life, Alphonsus continued to acknowledge his obligations to his mother, for the great care she had taken of him during his childhood. "If I must admit," he was wont to say, "that there was anything good in me, as a child, and that I was kept from wickedness, I owe it entirely to the tender solicitude of my mother."
The mother of St. John Vianney: Marie Beluse
Marie had a sweetness and tenderness of character, a gentleness of manner, an elevation of mind which sprang from a deeply interior spirit, and fitted her to be the mother of a saint. Before the birth of the second of her six children, Marie had often offered him to God and the Blessed Virgin, and had even made a secret vow, should God accept her desire, to consecrate him to the service of the altar; with this view he received in baptism, on the very day of his birth, the names of Jean Baptiste and of Marie.
Marie Beluse watched for the first dawn of reason to turn her child's earliest thoughts to God. At eighteen months old he had already learned to join his little hands in prayer, and to lisp the names of Jesus and Mary. M. Vianney used often to tell how his mother would always come herself every morning to awaken her children, that she might see that they offered their hearts to God, and secure the first thought and the first action of the day for Him.
At three years old Jean Marie already began to retire into solitary places to pray. When he could yet hardly speak he loved to join in all the devotions of the family. He was the first to kneel down at midday or sunset to recite the Angelus with infantine gravity. The first present which he received from his mother was a little statue of the Blessed Virgin.. He prized it, not as a child's toy, but as an object of pious veneration.
In the long winter evenings he would sit for hours by his mother's side, talking with her of God and holy things, till her heart swelled with joy that her long-cherished hopes were thus being realized in the early sanctity of her child.
St. John Vianney said, "When I was quite little I had a pretty little rosary, to which my sister took a fancy; she wanted to have it. This was one of my first troubles. I went to consult my mother about it. She advised me to give it up for the love of God. I obeyed; but it cost me many tears."
All these holy affections grew with his growth; prayer was his delight before he understood it to be his duty. It was the spontaneous language of his lips, which were never profaned by any of the coarse and unbefitting words so commonly learned by village children. He was shielded from the knowledge of evil by the pure atmosphere of his father's house, and he seldom left his mother's side. Such was the innocence of his childhood, that he has been heard to say: "I knew nothing of evil till I learned to know it in the confessional."
The mother of St. Bernard: Alèthe de Montbard
Blessed Aleth was loving and devout. She bore her husband seven children: six sons and one daughter. She offered her children to the Lord as soon as they were born, with the prayer that He would call them to serve as priests or religious. And all of them did. All of them have been beatified, as has Aleth herself.
Piety and humbleness distinguished her character. Charity, too, she exercised in her neighborhood. Despite belonging to the highest nobility of Burgundy, she sought out the poor in their squalor and misery, attended to and relieved their sick, cleansing their cups and vessels with her own hands. The latter years of her life were passed in devotions and austerities, which were monastic in all but the name. By scantiness of food, by simplicity of dress, by the avoidance of worldly pleasures, by fasting, prayer, and vigils, she strove after that ideal of self-sacrifice and holiness. Aleth nursed all of her children herself, refusing to hire a wet nurse as was common among women of her rank. Despite having worldly wealth, she raised her children to eat simple foods and avoid ornate fashions.
To her great joy, she perceived that, early in childhood, Bernard possessed a most tender love for God and the Blessed Virgin, a great horror for sin, a most watchful care to preserve his innocence and purity, a great contempt for all temporal goods, and a high esteem of all that related to God and the salvation of souls.
The mother of St. Damien of Molokai: Catherine de Veuster
Catherine gave birth to her sixth child, Joseph Veuster, on January 3rd, 1840. A few weeks later, in the nearby church, he was baptized. They were pious people and silent prayers were offered as the child officially entered the Church. Then Catherine knelt at the communion rail and was "churched."
Damien's first lessons in conventional education were received from his mother. There were few books in the farmhouse, and those there were had been in the family for many generations. Written in ancient Flemish, they were of a religious theme. One book in particular was most popular with the family: a huge tome entitled "Lives of the Saints" with graphic woodcuts. Every day in the late afternoon, the three youngest children (Joseph, his brother Auguste, and his sister Pauline) would congregate with their mother in the kitchen. It was their favorite time of the day. The father and older children were still working in the fields and so the younger children had their mother, with the day's duties finished, to themselves.
The kitchen was a large, cheerful room, hung with polished pots and pans and with an open fire blazing beneath the iron pits. A sweet biscuit would be issued to each child, then the three would sit by their mother's feet as she delved into the volume and read the heroic deeds in the ancient days. These were the stories that colored their childhood and were practically the only ones they ever heard. It is no wonder, then, that their games became flavored with a tinge of ancient histories. These three young Flemings were the victims of a Roman mob, each one braving a roaring lion or a snarling centurion, and each taking turns at impersonating villainous characters. The farm garden became the Holy Land and the glories of the Crusades were reenacted. Bold knights battles savage Saracens among the cabbages.
The woodcuts of the big volume would be pored over and the pictures of the Saints experiencing varieties of ferocious deaths would kindle the young imaginations, and as the sparks flew from the kitchen fire, the minds of the children would paint vividly the agonies of the early Christians at the stake. Doubtless, these early impressions of faith and martyrdom helped to direct their own lives: in later years, all three entered the service of the Church in the religious life.
Sources:
The Life of Saint Alphonsus by Antonio Tannoja (1855)
Life of the Curé d'Ars by Alfred Monnin (1862)
Life and Times of Saint Bernard by James Cotter Morison (1901)
Damien the Leper by John Farrow (1937)
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