Most people view us as gypsies. Or at least dirty penitents. From the third child onwards, they already wrinkle their noses and cast suspicious glances. They ask if you're going to have another, as if they had raised the others until now. But I will stop here with painting the social landscape of mothers with many children; I will not mention the epithets like "rabbit," nor the days when I was left by the roadside with all the children, because there were too many for a Bolt (as if there could be too much when it comes to life), nor the crushing burden of raising them most often alone and stigmatized even by many polished Christians...
What I want to say, however, is that while the world views them this way, these mothers are, in fact, embodiments of beauty, light, and heavenly gifts.
Reading just a few of the lines that each mother brought with her to the dinner in Pridvor, I understand time and again what I have so often seen with my own eyes in families with many children. What chosen souls! How many talents poured out from the abundance of divine Love into the soil of their hearts! Lord, what beauty on their faces, in their breasts! Each of these mothers, like a humble walking light, toiling in humility, without the emphasis or ostentation of any public office or cabinet, sharing tassels of love and butterflies of affection, drawing smiles on every face of her household, warming the inner stove... But not just that! Also values, culture, art... the art of music, of image, of word! All clothed in the humble garment of service. They could have become renowned painters, iconographers, or who knows what! Because they truly have much talent, much gift. But each of them chose to bear the cross of love, to serve like a servant unknown to anyone, sometimes not even in her own family. She herself forgets her own gifts or needs. For years, she sees herself only as a housekeeper, a napkin, a night vigil, an emergency room worker, and other subsistence variants, with a hungry soul and not knowing where to look out the window of the horizons. And all this shows her to be much nobler, more self-sacrificing, all the more so since she could have achieved much and many things. And she left everything to wipe little mouths, to take to the toilet, even though she knows that even this child, for whom she crucifies her life, will later consider her commonplace and outdated in her views, will wound her heart as no one else can more fiercely. But also more vividly. Because from these wounds will spring forth the deepest tears of prayer, the holiest love: crucified love, and precisely for this reason, the bearer of Resurrection!
With these souls in mind, I wrote The Mother's Canon, thirsting for the Lord and carrying in my heart these maternal souls, whose hearts beat both on earth and in Heaven, for their children.
I wish to embrace through this article these semi-heavenly beings, nestled in often frail bodies yet bearing children – all these mothers, the most beautiful mothers from Pridvor, who chose to clothe the world with their inner beauty, no matter how many hardships or wounds they may have experienced. It is so precious to choose light instead of darkness, to transform renunciation into patience, to know that, scattered like blood-stained poppies, there are still beautiful people in this world, people who transform ignorance into prayer beads, malice into forgiveness, and the coarse into delicate love... From what I see, in our age, the Lord's word that we are a "little flock" is being fulfilled, but I am glad to find you, to know that you are, that we are together!
I hold you all tightly in a warm embrace, you beautiful people, a bundle of shimmering rays, who transform shadows into wings of Heaven! And to you, mothers with grace and fervor, I wish that you may see your children embraced in the Love of God... and to all of you, I thank you!
Maria Tudor
Photography by Andreea Stanciu