This week, a familiar Gospel reading is paired with the US observance of Mother’s Day. It’s a brilliant match, one that I wished happened more often as the secular occasion helps to illustrate more deeply the message that Jesus gives to his disciples the night of his betrayal and arrest.

Mother’s Day has a complicated history here in the US and I suppose that is paralleled by the complicated emotions that Mother’s Day brings up in many of us. But if we can keep our attention on the love that Jesus is commanding us to have and use our best experiences of our relationships with our mothers, or those who were like mothers to us, we can go deeper into both the holiday and the teaching.