Vocation of spiritual motherhood for priests

(an excerpt from an article by Mary Kaufmann)

…the vocation of spiritual motherhood for priests – spiritually mature women willing to offer their lives and pray at the Cross for priests and the priesthood.

This is not a call to “maternalism” towards priests, to show up at the rectory with food, offer advice or to hover around priests. It’s not necessarily a call to close friendship with the priest, but more a connection experienced on the supernatural level, for their mutual growth in holiness. Spiritual motherhood demands and develops the spiritual and interpersonal maturity of the woman involved by presenting her with a regular opportunity to offer her spiritual resources for the benefit of priests with detachment or without meeting her own personal needs in doing so.

Spiritual mothers are virtuous women, women centered in God, women tempered by suffering, sometimes even suffering from interaction with priests, but women able to offer “a widow’s mite” in a way that makes a powerful spiritual difference for the Church.

Some spiritual mothers offer their joys and sorrows for all priests and the priesthood in general; while others feel called to pray and sacrifice for one specific priest or seminarian.

Some spiritual moms know not even the priest that they pray for, while others live a holy, spiritual friendship with the priest. While the interpersonal dynamic of spiritual motherhood may vary, certain fundamental characteristics remain: to spiritually accompany the priest by offering their lives as living sacrifice for them.

Some dioceses that have implemented programs of spiritual motherhood of priests, have organized them as double-blind arrangements, where the spiritual mother and the priest himself do not know each other’s names. The women know only that they are praying for the priest assigned to them, and the priest, that they have a generous personal intercessor.