“I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” (John 13:34)
If my mother were still alive, last month on April 12th we would have celebrated her 100th birthday. She was born in Peschici, Italy, a small picturesque mountain town overlooking the Adriatic Sea. Her town was picturesque, but poverty stricken. At age sixteen in 1920 she immigrated to America, accompanied only by a shirt tail relative, to work as a domestic in the home of a childless couple, her Zio Luigi and Zia Rosina, an aunt and uncle, who lived in Revere, Massachusetts.
Mamma didn’t want to leave Italy, but had to because there wasn’t enough money to feed her family. She was expected to send money back home every week to help out financially, which she dutifully did for many years thereafter. In 1925, she married my father, also an Italian immigrant, born twenty nine years earlier, 1896, in Valledolmo, Sicily. They became the proud parents of five children, four boys and one girl. I was the last one, the youngest, a change of life baby, who was supposed to be named Antoinette. Mamma got an Anthony instead! Whatever disappointment she may have felt about not having a second daughter, she never let on.
As an aside, the doctor at her first pre-natal visit in 1944 diagnosed me as a tumor. Upon being told, she replied: “Dottore, I don’t think so, my tumor justa kick me!” I was the last child to arrive but the first to be born in a hospital, the original Rochester General on West Main Street.
Our mamma, though she only had a third grade education, was an extraordinarily wise woman. It would never have occurred to her to define love. She would have laughed at the idea. For her love wasn’t something you talked about or thought about, it was something you did. You could actually feel the love in our home when you entered like the wonderfully fragrant aroma of freshly baking bread. She was forever looking at us fondly, hugging us (over our false protestations), and sharing in our laughter or tears. There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do for us. And when the grandchildren started arriving, she became the quintessential doting Grandma
Rose shamelessly spoiling each one.
Love, for Mama, was much more than a feeling; it was something she lived. Those of you who’ve heard me preach about her during my six years as deacon here at Transfiguration know that her favorite way to express love, as with so many mothers of whatever ethnicity, was with food.
A 3” by 5”photograph of her with a beaming smile as she dropped home made ravioli ( my sister Mary’s favorite) into a pot of boiling water occupies an honored place on the refrigerator in the kitchen of each of her children. (This is an enlargement of that photo.) She was happiest when she was shopping for, preparing, cooking, and serving a meal. Only the freshest and finest ingredients available would do, many of which she grew in her garden. My father, for instance, wouldn’t eat meat or fish that had been frozen. Even when money was tight, as it was during the Great Depression when my family had to go on welfare (I wasn’t born yet), she refused to scrimp on food. Her favorite expression was: “mangiate, mangiate,” (“eat, eat”)
Nobody left mamma’s table hungry. There was always enough scrumptious food to feed at least six more people. Dropping in uninvited at mealtime wasn’t considered ill-mannered, it was expected. Meals on Sundays and holidays lasted for hours, course after delicious course of mouth watering delicacies, unabashedly calorie, cholesterol, and carbohydrate laden, washed down with some of Papa’s home made wine. It was the youngest child’s chore to get the wine for that meal’s consumption from one of the barrels in our cellar, which we never referred to as “basement.” Kids usually drank gassosa, an Italian version of 7-Up. Pasta of various shapes and sizes was almost always included on the menu, often laboriously hand made, ravioli, manicotti, lasagna, tagliatelle, orrechietelli, and my favorite – gnocchi, all of which we referred to as macaroni, never as pasta. Salad was eaten after the main course to aid digestion. Antipasto came first. Meals were times of celebration and camaraderie. Everybody was expected to engage in lively conversation and, of course, to eat heartily. Nibbling at your food meant something was wrong with you, physically or spiritually.
On the rare occasions my family went to a restaurant, non-Italians would invariably stare at us for our boisterous behavior. Any guest coming to our home for the first time to share in a meal, particularly a prospective son or daughter-in-law, was always discretely advised about what to expect.
Since so many mothers are cut from the same clothe, I’m reminded of joke someone e-mailed me recently. What’s the difference between an Italian mama and a Jewish mama? The Italian mama tells her child “if you no eat, I’ll kill you.” The Jewish mama says “If you don’t eat, Ill kill myself.” (Actually they both play the guilt card like concert violists!)
Today’s gospel reading is from the 13th chapter of John, the Last Supper. It’s no coincidence, I believe, that Jesus chooses his final meal on Holy Thursday, the night before he dies, to institute the Eucharist. The Eucharist, of course, is the principal rite of Christian worship where bread and wine become the real presence of God -- food and drink for body and soul. Eucharistic celebrations of the earliest Christians included a complete evening meal, with each participant bringing food to share with others. These fellowship meals were commonly termed: “love feasts,” no doubt because of what else happened at the Last Supper.
After instituting the Eucharist, during his farewell discourse Jesus instructs the disciples on how he expects them to relate to one another – as servants. To make his meaning crystal clear, he shows them by washing their feet and telling them: “As I have done for you, so you must do.”
Furthermore, in today’s gospel reading, Jesus concludes his lesson on how to relate by commanding them to love one another. Love and service are to be the hallmarks of discipleship. “This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Loving one another is proclaimed to be a new commandment with Jesus, the fullest expression of God’s love, becoming the living example of what love is. “As I have loved you,” he says, “so you also should love one another.”
What is Christian love? It’s an attitude, a decision of the heart to put another’s interest before your own, no matter the cost. It’s a willingness to sacrifice for another, expecting nothing in return. When you love someone, their joy, growth, and welfare become paramount. Your joy comes from being the vessel for their fulfillment. Scripture tells us that God’s very essence is love. Human love gives us the closest glimpse of God you can get this side of eternity. Love is the threshold where divine and human presence ebb and flow into each other.
Loving like Jesus certainly doesn’t happen automatically, nor easily or naturally. It needs to be learned, cultivated, and practiced through the trials of life. Loving like Jesus requires you to care about people irrespective of who they are. It requires you to respond to the plight of the poor, the oppressed, and the underprivileged, regardless of where they are. Because the “last and the least” are the ones with whom Jesus identifies most particularly, Christians see the face of God above all in the faces of suffering people everywhere.
If God touches you with divine love, the result is love flowing through you to others. When you realize the depth of divine love, your heart longs to show that love in tangible ways. Mamma, without trying taught us kids the greatest, most enduring lesson of our lives: that love is something to be lived and acted upon, day in and day out.
Happy Birthday, Ma. Happy Mother’s Day.
Anthony J. Sciolino
5th Sunday of Easter
May 9, 2004. Mother’s Day (CycleC)
Acts 14:21-27
Revelation 21:1-5a
John 13:31-33a, 34-35.