Pastoral Prayer for Mother's Day (also Graduate Recognition Sunday)

God of our mothers and our fathers:

We remember that you said that you would love us like your own children.  Your Son, Jesus Christ, said that he longed to gather his people under his wings as a hen gathers its chicks.  The prophets told us that you loved your people as a mother who gives birth to her children, nourishes them, helps them to grow, and looks to them with incomparable affection.

And so, we ask that you would let these mothers know that you know how profound a price they have paid for their love for their children.  As Mary learned from the angel who announced she would bear the Savior that “a sword will pierce your heart,” the mothers who we celebrate know what it means to have their hearts pierced.  They know what it means to worry after the safety of their children, they know sleepless nights due to feedings and sicknesses and nights out, they know private joys and concerns that words cannot describe.  Let these mothers know that you understand, that you who are our Father also have the heart of a mother.  May these mothers know that they are loved, honored, cherished, appreciated by us, and that you share a deep and abiding bond and understanding with them.

We ask also for your mercy and comfort upon all who find this day difficult for any reason.  Someone is celebrating Mother’s Day today and painfully feeling the loss of a mother.  Someone else is yearning to conceive and has been unable. Someone else always wanted children and life turned out in such a way that biological children were not possible.  Someone is estranged from a mother or a child and this day opens up a wound afresh.  Someone has lost a child and is remembering that she is still a mother to the child who is now with you.  O God, who knows our griefs, comfort these.

You have loved us with a perfect mother’s love, and so you have shown us that all the love we received from our mothers is a reflection of your perfect love; any grief we have felt can be perfectly soothed through your perfect love.  

So we ask you to bless all the mothers in the flesh, and all the mothers in the faith.  Give back to them many fold the blessing they have given us.  May they be truly honored, appreciated, celebrated this day. May they feel your embrace and may you fill their hearts to overflowing.  

And may we go from this day committed to parent the parentless, to honor those who have cared for us, to go in the strength of your love and the affirmation of the love of our mothers in family and in faith, offering that eternal love of you who made us so that all people may find themselves in your family and enfolded in your grace.

We ask also that these graduates and all others would be affirmed in the good work they have done, that you would bless them as they seek the next step in their lives, and that you would help them to serve you with the gifts and graces you have given them.  May they always know that no matter where they go and how far they go from us, we are always their family and that this place is always home.

We ask these things through the power of the Spirit who has adopted us into the family of you, our Father, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray, saying...