Bishop issues Mothering Sunday message

5:24pm Friday 8th March 2013 in News

THE Bishop of Dudley, the Rt Revd David Walker, is asking people to remember mothers who are struggling to make ends meet this year – 100 years after the campaign to re-establish Mothering Sunday was launched.

Rt Rev Walker said: “I’m not feeling very sentimental about motherhood this year, at a time when more and more mothers are needing to turn to church run Food Banks to see their children are adequately fed.

“And I’m not very sentimental when I think about the mothers who are going to lose their homes this year because they fall victim to the bedroom tax, or the cap on benefits. This year I want to have in my thoughts and prayers all those mothers who are struggling against poverty to give their children a start in life.

“My own mother is no longer with us, but I vividly remember her determined single handed efforts to allow me to stay on at school after 16 and get my A levels.

“A mixture of what she could earn from her work and the state benefits that she received just kept us afloat. For her sake I’m not sentimental at all about motherhood this year, I’m actually rather angry about the ways our society is undermining it.”

The Church of England is suggesting that prayers for mothers are posted on online at www.prayoneforme.org.

In 1921 she wrote a booklet asking for a full revival of Mothering Sunday, eventually founding The Society for the Observance of Mothering Sunday and spending more than 25 years promoting the celebration of the festival.

Thanks to her efforts, Mothering Sunday – which has its roots in the pre-Reformation Church – has been widely observed and re-established across the Church of England, and celebrated in wider society.

http://www.stourbridgenews.co.uk/news/10278233.Bishop_issues_Mothering_Sunday_message/