Bénédicte Delelis is the mother of four children and teaches at the Collège des Bernardins in Paris.
Why did you write this book?
We hear a lot about what nuns, priests and consecrated people discover about Christ in life. Elizabeth of the Trinity writes: “We find God both in washing and in prayer. » What about the mothers who do tons of dishes, purees, who keep tidying up, bending down to pick up toys?
While we may have the feeling of wasting our time in these modest, stripping, somewhat down-to-earth tasks, how can we live them according to the virtues of charity, hope and faith? Finally, what does Christ tell us about motherhood? Would there be a particular trait, a Christic facet that would be specific to him? It seemed to me that the spiritual literature was a little poor on these questions.
What exactly does motherhood say about Christ?
She personally made me feel the love of Christ who gives his body. Having lived through physically trying pregnancies, I understood that Jesus had loved us until then. Giving your flesh to those you love becomes more concrete for a mother.
Maternity is a carnal experience and, in this, I believe that it joins the mystery of the Eucharist: a love which gives its body to food and which accepts having its hands and feet pierced. Yes, sometimes, the day after childbirth, our body is ravaged, bloodless.
The day after giving birth during which I had suffered a major hemorrhage, I went to mass. And the word: “This is my blood shed for you” particularly resonated with me. I no longer understood her in my head, but in my flesh. This carnal gift is then experienced during breastfeeding, in this skin-to-skin contact with our baby, but also because of the passage of time because we are constantly disturbed, challenged, physically solicited.
You also write in your book that motherhood made you discover the wonder of God for his creation.
I believe that our utter awe of a baby is the same as that of God, because he is Father, when he looks at us with mad tenderness, gratitude and joy. Also, we do not manage, we adults, to have a joy as pure and powerful as babies. Such must be Christ’s joy, untouched by sin, in his creation.
We tend to imagine that God sees us through the small end of the telescope, with our flaws. I think on the contrary that he contemplates us with a very wide, very tender eye, seeing the best of ourselves… Just as parents see the best of their children and all their potentialities.
Motherhood is as Saint Paul writes in the First Letter to the Corinthians: “Love takes patience; love renders service; love is not jealous (…) It supports everything, it trusts everything, it hopes for everything. » This is what Jesus lives for us and what is in God’s heart. He waits, He hopes, despite our wanderings, that good things will hatch from us.
Would motherhood be a path to holiness?
I believe more and more that holiness is the perfection of charity and the perfection of love. In this, motherhood is a school of holiness since it is a school of exceptional charity obliging from morning to evening to give of oneself: there is no escape, it is non-stop.
Mothers do not know who Christ is and what holiness is, but in their selflessness, their gift of themselves, they live it. It is for them what the Gospel of Matthew says: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink…”
Arrived at the last judgment, in paradise, they will see that they were for their children the face of Christ, the love of Christ. And that in fact they know the good better than a person with limited love or, for example, than a consecrated celibate who has stiffened in his pride.
Thus, a mother who does not or hardly knows Jesus can know the fullness of charity and live holiness.
Motherhood is certainly the gift of oneself, of one’s body, of one’s being, but also of one’s limits…
Patience, exhaustion, resistance to shouting… You have to agree to these limits. Because only God has perfect love, which is ultimately quite relaxing! And our children have to discover that only God loves them with a perfect love. We do what we can. We must not hesitate to tell our children that we have reached our limits at certain times and to ask them for forgiveness when necessary.
We can lie at work, in the parish, in our social life, but we cannot lie in the family. We are naked, and our children see very well who we are! That’s the beauty: they both see our limits and give us an unconditional love that also helps us to remain humble: they love us all the same.
So, of course, I would like to be a better mother, but I experienced that I was not. I try to love better with the grace of God, but I no longer grieve over my countless imperfections.
Also, this unconditional love which is both a gift and a work, I learned it from my husband who is a true servant. So, if this carnal bond so particular to the child is specific to the mother, this disinterested gift is also paternal. Unconditional love is in no way a prerogative of motherhood.
How to combine often frenetic pace with children and spiritual life?
Everyone needs to be revitalized by the love of Christ, otherwise the love in their daily life ends up being exhausted. On the other hand, there is no point in feeling guilty if it seems poor or not enough. It is normal for mothers to be exhausted and a Carmelite prayer is not expected of them!
It is up to everyone to find the right moment and the cursor. Take perhaps even five minutes to pray each day? To read the word of God? Go say hello to the tabernacle with the stroller? Joining Christ also means getting up at 4 a.m. for his child who needs us. He is then in “this least of mine”, and He is at the same time within us to give us strength.
When she has just had a child, a mother’s prayer may be to breastfeed. Faced with teenagers, mass at least once a week can allow them to feed on the patience of Christ. Like the mother’s belly which grows and shrinks, this requires a great deal of flexibility and adaptability according to age and period.
Mothers are also under the weight of a sort of injunction to perfection.
There is an injunction to the perfect mom, of course, but also to the happy mom, to absolute happiness, which I find very overwhelming. This offends me because this injunction is neither just nor Christian since Christ said: “Take up your cross and follow me. »
In reality, sometimes, we can’t take it anymore. When you are expecting an unwanted child, when the father has left or when there is a “fifth surprise”, when you are short of money, you are still full of kilos, you have tired suitcases under the eyes and that we are on the verge of maternal burn-out, no, motherhood does not always fulfill us.
We are far from pharmacy ads! Wanting to escape suffering is a scam of our time. Besides, we give birth in pain and we try our best, there are immense joys and there are immense sufferings.
Motherhood is a dazzling experience, but also a path of suffering insofar as there is no love without suffering. Love is harsh and rough and, in the end, it makes one deeply happy, because it expands the being in the sense that it bursts it within its limits. But it’s painful to burst.
Joy springs from the heart of this suffering, often from an apparently poor and unforeseen event. Then there is the day when our child leaves home… Still suffering for some, that of the “empty nest”. But what joy to think: “I loved it until then, I loved it until the end”, to see his child leave, standing up, and to say to himself: ” Mission accomplished ! »
Here too, isn’t there something very Christlike in the very fact of letting one’s child go one day?
Yes and it struck me with my children when they were infants. Tell me : “It’s a story between God and him; I am an instrument” calmed me, because I had the impression that this little entrusted baby was too big for me. I felt that this child was not my property, that there was space between him and me (which is proper to chastity, space of his vocation on which I should not put my hand) .
The movement of Christ towards my child precedes me, and this child will have his own life with God. What I find in all the stages of life of my children and this, from pregnancy: there is a moment, at the very beginning, when only God knows that this being exists. So there is always a mystery that escapes me. Who is he really? I can sense something from my child but only God knows who he really is and what he expects of him in the world.
To read
letter to mothers, by Bénédicte Delelis, Mame, €12.90.
Bénédicte Delelis: “Motherhood joins the mystery of the Eucharist”