Motherhood: The Reign of Love

"It is true to nature, although it be expressed in a figurative form, that a mother is both the morning and the evening star of life. The light of her eye is always the first to rise, and often the last to set upon man's day of trial. She wields a power more decisive far than syllogisms in argument, or courts of last appeal in authority. Nay, in cases not a few, where there has been no fear of God before the eyes of the young—where His love has been unfelt and His law outraged, a mother's affection or her tremulous tenderness has held transgressors by the heartstrings, and been the means of leading them back to virtue and to God."

A lovely romantic and powerful view of Mothers. We are not as valued in the 21st century, at least not celebrated in this way anymore.

"As the prophet spread himself upon the body of the dead child, applying limb to limb till life returned, a mother can take man's whole nature under her control. She thus becomes what she has been called, "The Divinity of Infancy." Her smile is its sunshine, her word its mildest law, until sin and the world have steeled the heart. She can shower around her the most genial of all influences, and from the time when she first laps her little one in Elysium by clasping him to her bosom—"its first paradise"—to the moment when that child is independent of her aid, or perhaps, like Washington, directs the destinies of millions, her smile, her word, her wish is an inspiring force. A sentence of encouragement or praise is a joy for a day. It spreads light upon all faces, and renders a mother's power more and more charm-like, as surely as ceaseless accusing, rebuking, and correcting, chafes, sours, and disgusts. So intense is her power, that the mere remembrance of a praying mother's hand, laid on the head in infancy, has held back a son from guilt when passion had waxed strong."

Read more here: Home; A Book for the Family, 1857.

Also see an interview with Alice Von Hildebrand, author of The Privilege of Being a Woman."Women in the secularized world need to be reminded that fulfilling their maternal role is infinitely valuable in God's sight..."