Editorial
Yesterday, April 19,2026,Catholic faithful and their friends all over the world celebrated the 2026 Mothers’ Day. A few weeks ago, Christians of the Anglican Church domination celebrated theirs. The pentecostal churches also have days set aside to honour the mothers.
It is important to point out that Mothers’ Day in the Christendom is more than a calendar date for a mere celebration of motherhood. It is a moral checkpoint for mothers on how they discharge their motherly duties at home as society expects them to.
Across Catholic, Anglican, Pentecostal, and Orthodox traditions, the day compels the Church to look back at what it has taught about motherhood, what it has practiced, and what it owes the women who carry families, congregations, and communities. A retrospective appraisal is,therefore, appropriate.
Historically, the Church did not invent Mothers’ Day, but it baptized it. According to research, Anna Jarvis’ push for a U.S. Mothers’ Day in 1908 was rooted in her own Methodist faith and her mother’s prayer that someone would create a memorial day for mothers. In the UK, “Mothering Sunday” is older still — the fourth Sunday in Lent, when servants were allowed to return to their “mother church” and their mothers. The Christians then turned a social campaign into a liturgical moment: gratitude tied to grace.
It should be noted that the scripture gave the Church its language for honouring mothers. The Fifth Commandment, “Honour your father and your mother,” places maternal honour on the same tablet as worship of God. Proverbs 31 sketches the “virtuous woman” whose children rose up and called her blessed. The New Testament elevates motherhood without sentimentalizing it: Mary’s fiat at the Annunciation, Lois and Eunice passing sincere faith to Timothy,and the widow’s offering commended by Christ. These texts became the backbone of Mothers’ Day sermons.
However,the Church’s record is mixed when we move from pulpit to practice. For centuries, motherhood was praised but narrowly defined. The “good Christian mother” was often pictured only as married, fertile, and home-bound. Barren women, single mothers, adoptive mothers, and mothers who grieved miscarriage or child loss were heard less from the Church. The retrospective view must admit this: we celebrated the icon while sometimes ignoring the person.
In Nigeria and much of Africa, Mothers’ Day took on vibrant cultural colour. Anglican and Catholic women’s guilds, Catholic Women Organization(CWO), and Pentecostal women’s fellowships turned the day into a festival of wrappers, thanksgiving, and special fundraising. It became a rare Sunday when women led processions, preached, controlled the treasury, and were publicly thanked. That visibility mattered. In churches where leadership skews male, Mothers’ Day is one of the few moments power visibly shifts, even if only for 24 hours.
This appraisal equally touches the theology of suffering that are sometimes attached to motherhood. “Motherhood is a cross” was preached to encourage endurance, but it also baptized silence. Domestic abuse, maternal mortality, and postpartum depression were spiritualized rather than solved. A mother told to “carry her cross” while her husband strayed or her clinic lacked drugs heard piety instead of advocacy. It is expected that the Church that honours the Holy mother, Mary,should also fight for hospitals where women who represent the Holy mother should receive adequate medical attention and so do not die in childbirth.
Nevertheless, there is progress worth naming. Many denominations now run maternal health outreaches on Mothers’ Day. Catholic hospitals host free antenatal clinics. Pentecostal churches fund scholarships for widows’ children. Sermons have widened: we hear about Hannah’s infertility, Jochebed’s courage under Pharaoh, and the Syrophoenician woman’s fierce advocacy for her daughter. Motherhood is being defined by nurture, not just biology. Foster mothers, teachers, and spiritual mothers are named from the altar.
These inspirational examples, notwithstanding, gaps still remain. The Church rarely speaks to mothers of prodigals without blaming them. It struggles to pastor women who choose not to be mothers or who could not. Mothers’ Day services can feel like a minefield for women carrying silent grief. A retrospective appraisal demands liturgies that bless the childless with the same favour and counselling units that do not reduce every woman’s worth to her womb.
Again,the commercialization of Mothers’ Day is another front. Anna Jarvis herself later opposed Mothers’ Day because greeting card companies commodified it. The Church faces the same temptation. When Mothers’ Day is measured by the size of the “women’s thanksgiving” or the cost of the uniform, we have lost the essence. The first Mothering Sunday was about returning home, not about returning with gifts. This appraisal asking : Are we forming grateful children or funding church projects?
Looking forward, Christendom should reclaim Mothers’ Day as discipleship, not just appreciation. Teach fathers to co-parent as Scripture models in Priscilla and Aquila, not just praise mothers for “enduring.” Commit church budgets to daycare for single mothers, legal aid for widows, and mental health support for postpartum mothers. Let the day commission men to be like Joseph — present, protective, and willing to upend plans for the sake of mother and child.
It is the view of *Nigerian Horn* that Mothers’ Day in the Christendom should be like a reflective mirror for the church and the mothers. It should reflect our best theology of love, sacrifice, and honour. It ought to also reflect our blind spots about gender, grief, and justice. The retrospection should be able to identify things that have been done well as well as areas for improvement.
To truly honour mothers is to build a Church and a society where no woman has to be a hero just to survive motherhood. That would be an offering worthy of the day and of the God who said, “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.”
