“We need to learn every day to be true mothers, because being a true mother is a gift that we must ask for,” he said.
The Mozambican Catholic Bishop, who was appointed Auxiliary Bishop for Maputo in March 2023 emphasized the need to embrace motherhood with humility and thankfulness.
He said, “We must also ask in an attitude of gratitude, because it is beautiful to be a mother, it is beautiful to transmit a life; it is beautiful to know that we collaborate as mothers in God's plan to bring an incipient life into our wombs.”
Motherhood, Bishop Muananoua reiterated, “gives pride; but it needs to be exercised with humility.”
While motherhood “makes us proud,” he said, “it is also laborious; it takes a lot of work, because every day we have to ask for the humility to be true mothers, the humility to be aware of the great responsibility that God has placed in us, to transmit the warmth of life, to nourish the hope of life, to care for life from its earliest moments.”
The Auxiliary Bishop of Maputo further reflected on the beginning of human life, saying, “Each of us was welcomed by a womb for nine months; each of us grew up, nourished by breasts for some time. We lived in the warmth (of the womb); we are what we are because a woman, by the grace of God, brought us to life.”
“Today, as we live this day in our Archdiocese, we have been asked to meditate on the vocation of motherhood, to give thanks for the gift of motherhood, and to look to Mary as our Great Mother,” Bishop Muananoua said on May 5, during the Thanksgiving Mass for Women's Day in Maputo Archdiocese.
He added, “Let us accept the recommendations of love that Jesus makes to each one of us, looking also at those faces, looking at those mothers, looking at those lives that forget themselves so that we can be what we are.”
Mothers, Bishop Muananoua said, “are a reflection of Divine Love.”
João Vissesse is an Angolan Journalist with a passion and rich experience in Catholic Church Communication and Media Apostolate.
